


What Once Went Wrong

by patchfire, raving_liberal



Series: Quinntum Leap [1]
Category: Glee
Genre: Adoption, Angels, Birth, Car Accidents, F/M, Gen, Mild off-screen violence, Open Adoption, Out With A Bang Big Bang, Putting Right What Once Went Wrong, Quinntum Leap, Season/Series 01, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 02:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 50,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4287204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patchfire/pseuds/patchfire, https://archiveofourown.org/users/raving_liberal/pseuds/raving_liberal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the way to Finn and Rachel's wedding, a truck hits Quinn's car, and she wakes up in the hospital in the early autumn of 2009, with memories of a life she hasn't lived yet. She sets out to change what she must have dreamed, with just two goals in mind: still getting a letter from Yale, and doing it with Finn still at her side. As she begins to make changes, Quinn has to decide if her initial goals are still what she really wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Once Went Wrong

“...stable...soon.”

“I’ll call...of course...they will.”

“Oh, Quinn.”

Quinn registers the sound of people talking, but all she can concentrate on is how heavy her eyelids feel. She needs to open them, wants to open them, but they’re so heavy. She doesn’t hear anyone nearby after a moment, and if she’s going to make the effort to open her eyes, she wants to talk to someone. Not to merely look around an empty hospital room whose decor she can likely predict: white or beige walls, muted chair, television bolted in a corner. 

The next time she wakes up, which could be the third or fourth time, she forces her eyes open when she hears the squeak of shoes on the floor. Her eyes are barely cracked, only a little light getting through, when she speaks. “The...wedding? Did I miss it?” She has to clear her throat twice, and it’s a little dry. Maybe they’ll give her water soon. 

“Oh, Quinnie, you’re awake!” Quinn recognizes her mom’s voice and she nods a little in response. “What was that you said?”

“The wedding. I told Rachel I’d be there, but...” Quinn moves her head slightly. “How long since—”

“Oh, you’ve been out for about twelve hours, Quinn,” her mom says. “But who’s Rachel? What wedding?”

“My friend Rachel, Mom! From glee club!”

“My little Quinnie!”

Quinn opens her eyes wider, mostly out of shock, and stares. “What the _hell_ are you doing here?”

“That’s no way to talk to your father!”

“You haven’t been my father for two years!” Quinn closes her eyes again and looks away from him. 

Before anyone else can speak, the door opens again. “Mr. and Mrs. Fabray, if I can speak with Quinn for a moment?”

“Oh, of course, Dr. Townsend!” 

Quinn can’t help but breathe a sign of relief as her parents exit the room. “Now, Quinn,” the doctor says, “I wasn’t sure if your parents were aware of your condition.”

“Condition?” Quinn says blankly. “My mom said I was only out for twelve hours!”

“I just wanted to reassure you that your baby is doing fine—”

“Baby!” Quinn exclaims. “I haven’t—I haven’t slept with anyone in months! I can’t do this again!”

“Again, Quinn?” The doctor looks confused.

“I had a baby when I was sixteen,” Quinn says flatly, feeling hollow.

“Quinn, you’re fifteen years old.”

Quinn’s eyes widen in horror as she stares at the doctor, and she reaches up to her hair. It’s still long. “What year is it?”

“It’s 2009.”

“What month?”

“It’s early October, Quinn.”

“I’m fifteen years old.” Quinn is trying to process this fact, but the doctor just looks at her like she’s stating the obvious. 

“Yes, Quinn, you are fifteen.”

“I’m a _sophomore_ again.” 

Quinn looks down at her hands, which are shaking. “I don’t know if I can do this all again,” she whispers, already tuning out the doctor. Her mind is racing. She doesn’t know exactly when this is. The last thing _she_ remembers is winning Regionals her senior year. Getting a Cheerios uniform on again. Hurrying to the courthouse in her bridesmaid’s dress. Apparently she remembers two and a half years of a life that she hasn’t lived. 

Finn, and Puck. Her parents’ divorce. Beth. Sam Evans. More glee club competitions. Friendships. Nationals in New York City. Her unfortunate foray into pink hair. Her acceptance letter to Yale. 

Quinn finally starts to cry. “I really can’t do it all again,” she mumbles. “I have to make it different somehow.” She doesn’t know how long she cries, or when the doctor leaves, but he must at least keep her parents from reentering the room. When she can’t cry any more, she slowly levers herself out of bed, walking to the bathroom of the hospital room. She has to drag an IV pole with her, but it’s worth it, worth it to stand there and stare at her reflection, her _young_ reflection. 

“Everything’s going to be different,” she says out loud, after staring at herself for at least five minutes. “From the moment I leave this room, everything is going to be different. The bad things, anyway.” She gives her reflection a trembling smile. “I’m still going to go to Yale.” 

Quinn pretends to be asleep when her parents come back in the room again, and she thinks back—or forward—to when they found out about the baby, to when they kicked her out of her home. She was unprepared for their reaction the first time; she can plan ahead far better this time. She won’t be packing hurriedly, and she won’t be living at Finn’s house.

The thought of Finn, and Puck, makes her want to wince. She’s made her peace with both of them, and she’s pretty sure they have with each other and with her, but only in her dream-world. Not in the real world, where she’s just lied to Finn, where she’s insulted Puck, and where the baby won’t have the name ‘Beth’ for months. 

She realizes that there is no single first thing she has to do. She has to do a lot of things, all at the same time. She has to come clean with Finn that the baby isn’t his. She has to apologize to Puck and let him decide which of them should tell Finn that the baby is Puck’s. She has to start reaching out to Mercedes and all of New Directions. She needs her friends. Her friends from the dream-world, all of them, and instead she’s in a world where she has none of them. Just a duped boyfriend, a rightfully angry babydaddy, and a glee club that doesn’t trust her yet. 

 

Quinn isn’t supposed to drive for one more day, so she asks her mom to drive her to Finn’s house the next evening, after spending the day at home and not at school. She feels restless all day, because her homework is easy and she can’t do anything else with her time. She thinks about things she wants to be different for herself. She wants _Finn_ , and she doesn’t want her stupid mistake to cost her Finn permanently like it did in the dream-world, even though her dream-self seemed fine with it. She hopes that by telling Finn right away, they can get through it, that there doesn’t have to be a break-up so dramatic, that she won’t need to date Sam before she dates Finn again, and that Finn won’t break up with her a first time, much less a second time. 

She makes a list of the things that she can remember that she feels need to be different. If she presents things the right way to Finn, maybe he won’t break up with her immediately. Maybe he’ll be the assistance that Quinn will need to pull everything off, fixing the things that didn’t go quite right and holding on to the things that did. Full of resolve, Quinn checks her reflection in the mirror before leaving her mother’s car and walking up the sidewalk to Finn’s front door. Quinn takes a final deep breath and knocks. 

When Finn opens the door, he looks surprised and worried. “Quinn! Are you supposed to be out of bed? Aren’t you supposed to be resting or something?”

Quinn doesn’t answer immediately, because her first thought is that Finn looks so young to her, so innocent compared to the Finn she last interacted with. After a few seconds pass, she remembers that part of why she’s there is to change at least a few things. Maybe Finn will retain some of that innocence. “I’ll be fine sitting down, if you’ll let me in?” Quinn says. 

“Sure. Yeah. You should come sit down,” Finn says, opening the door wider and stepping out of the way so Quinn can come in. Quinn perches on the edge of Finn’s couch. 

“Can I have a glass of water?” Quinn asks, because even for her, it will easier to tell Finn she’s lied to him if he’s in the next room, not looking directly at him. 

“Yeah, of course,” Finn says, walking into the kitchen to get the glass of water. She waits for the water to turn on before she continues. 

“I lied to you about something,” Quinn says, loudly enough that Finn should be able to hear her. 

“You _weren’t_ supposed to be out of bed yet?” Finn asks. The water shuts off, and then Quinn can hear Finn opening the freezer and then the banging sound of him hitting a plastic ice cube tray on the counter. 

“Not about that. It’s more complicated,” Quinn says. “Before I tell you the details, I need to ask you for your help, though.” 

“Okay,” Finn says. The ice cubes clink into the glass, then Finn walks back into the living room, holding out the water glass. He smiles at her. 

“While I was unconscious,” Quinn says slowly as she takes the glass, “I had a very extensive dream, or something like a dream. About the rest of this year, and junior year, and most of our senior year. And I only liked a few things about what happened. I want to change the bad things, and keep the good things. Like your mom! She gets married,” Quinn says as brightly as she can. 

“Oh wow, for real? Was it like when somebody has a coma on TV, and then it turns out the whole last season was just a coma dream?” Finn asks. 

Quinn nods. “Or like a message from an angel. Will you help me change things?” 

“Do you really think an angel talked to you?” Finn asks. “Because if so, then, yeah, ‘cause I wouldn’t want to make it mad.”

“I can’t explain why it would be so vivid otherwise,” Quinn says, which is true. She has no idea why she would have a vivid, elaborate life unless it were a message from an angel, or an actual episode of going back in time. 

“What are we supposed to change?” Finn asks. 

“Don’t look so nervous. This will be good. You want your mom to be happy, right? We won’t change that. And you like having Puck as your best friend, right? You wouldn’t want to fight with him for months.” 

Finn shakes his head. “Did the angel say we were going to fight?”

Quinn nods. “You did, for a long time. And your stepbrother had to—”

“Wait, I get a brother? That’s so _cool_!” Finn says. “Is he older than me? Is he younger? Does he go to our school?”

“I don’t actually know when his birthday is. He’s a sophomore like us. And you’re probably going to freak out a little bit at first, but it will work out and you’ll really like having a brother. What we want to change is that he had to change schools for awhile,” Quinn explains. 

“Oh. Okay, yeah, I wouldn’t want my brother to have to go to another school, if I had one.”

“So you’ll help me? Even when I tell you the lie? You have to promise you’ll keep helping me, even if you’re mad.” 

“I promise,” Finn says. “If an angel told you to, then I promise.”

“Okay.” Quinn takes a deep breath. “The baby isn’t yours.” 

Finn’s smile doesn’t disappear. It just gets more confused-looking. “What?”

“The baby isn’t yours. It really isn’t from when we were in the hot tub.” 

“So… the baby is like Jesus?” Finn doesn’t look any less confused, though his smile does start to fade. “Quinn, did the angel get you pregnant?”

“No.” Quinn shakes her head hurriedly. “I was already pregnant. I’m sorry that I lied to you. In my other-world, I didn’t tell you for months, and I should have.” 

“But— but how?” Finn asks. He isn’t smiling at all now. He doesn’t look mad yet, but he definitely isn’t smiling. 

“Finn. You know how.” 

“But you haven’t ever done anything,” Finn says. “Maybe you’re still confused from the accident. That doesn’t make sense.”

“I know who it is. I’m not telling you that right now, because he thinks—well, that’s not important. I’m not confused, but the baby isn’t yours.” Quinn suddenly feels like crying, and she’s not sure if it’s sophomore-her or senior-her who wants to cry. “I’m sorry.” That’s definitely senior-her. 

“Wait. Did you have sex with somebody? _Sex_ , like sex-sex? With somebody who isn’t me?” Finn asks. 

Quinn nods, trying to keep the tears from leaking out and feeling ridiculous, because the older part of her is so mad at the younger her for hurting fifteen year old Finn. Finn looks like he’s about to start crying, too.

“But you wouldn’t, because of Jesus,” Finn says.

“I’m sorry,” Quinn repeats, and then she does start crying, looking at Finn’s face and remembering the other Finn’s face when he eventually found out. 

“But why?” Finn asks. His eyes start to water and one tear rolls down his face. He doesn’t even wipe at it. 

“I felt fat,” Quinn says, parroting the excuse the older her’s used one time, and then she shakes her head. “And I was mad that you had joined the glee club, and that Rachel Berry was mooning over you.” 

“But _why_?” Finn repeats. “You didn’t want to be my girlfriend anymore?”

Quinn shakes her head frantically. “No, I do, I do. I don’t know why.” 

Finn starts to cry harder. “But you had sex with somebody. And you lied to me.”

“But I’m trying to make things right!” Quinn insists. “That’s why I’m here.” 

“But you had _sex_ with somebody! And you _lied_ to me!” Finn says again. “You told me— why would you do that? What would you _do_ that?”

“I don’t know! I was scared! I don’t know,” Quinn repeats. 

“And that hot tub thing. You just made that up, didn’t you! The doctor didn’t say that to you!”

Quinn can’t stop crying now that she’s started, and she wipes ineffectually at her cheeks. “I just want to make things right!” 

“Well, you can’t!” Finn says. He scrubs at his face with his fists. “I’m really upset!”

“I know you are, but we _can_! We can make things right!” Quinn tries to remind Finn, frowning at him and still crying herself. 

“Just because some stupid coma angel says that, it doesn’t make it true,” Finn says. 

“But we can, Finn,” Quinn says. “I’m sorry I lied to you, but we can make things better than they would be otherwise.” 

“How?” Finn practically shouts at her. 

“By working together! By making bad things not happen!” 

“But bad things already happened!” 

Quinn realizes to her horror that she can’t stop crying. “But it can get so much worse.” 

“How could it be worse than this?” Finn demands. His face is red and tears are still pouring down his face. “This is the worst!”

“It’s not,” Quinn whispers, because she can acknowledge that Finn was far more upset about Puck than her, in the end. 

Finn shakes his head. “What could be worse than this?” 

“Remember what I said earlier? About Puck?” Quinn says. “Wouldn’t that be worse?” 

Finn freezes, staring at Quinn with his mouth open. The only thing still moving on his face are the tears that continue rolling down his cheeks. Quinn has the horrifying feeling that Finn has put everything together, and her eyes widen. 

“Shit,” Quinn says softly. 

Finn stands up, his hands in fists at his sides, and he continues staring at Quinn as his head tilts to the side. Quinn reaches out with one hand as she gets to her feet, planning to put her hand on top of one fist. Finn snatches his fist away from her before she can touch him, though, storming towards the door and flinging it open.

“Finn! Stop!” Finn doesn’t really stop, though; he turns and looks over his shoulder, his eyes wild and crazy before he slams the door, and Quinn realizes suddenly that she’s now alone in Finn’s house without a car. She doesn’t know when Finn’s mom will be home, but if she finds Quinn crying in her living room, Quinn will just tell her the truth: she and Finn had a fight. 

 

Quinn calms down enough to wipe her eyes and wash her face before she even calls her mother, and Judy picks her up before Carole returns. Quinn fakes a bright smile over her shoulder as she leaves the empty house, calling out “Bye, Finn!” in what her mother always admonishes her to use, an upbeat tone. She keeps up the facade throughout the ride home and a late dinner, then pleads more schoolwork and being tired from her accident to get out of sitting downstairs any longer. 

The bedroom door closes behind her, and Quinn sighs in relief before she quietly locks it. She can’t risk more tears until after her parents are in bed, but she can keep her hands and her mind occupied. Methodically, Quinn empties all of her drawers, and equally methodically, she puts everything she wants to take with her in the bottom drawers, and everything else in the other drawers. She listens to the sound of her father watching television downstairs, and decides to chance rearranging her closet. She finishes, changes into pajamas, unlocks her door, and turns out her lights just as she hears her parents passing by on their way to bed. Her mom calls out a faint ‘good night, Quinnie’, but neither of them so much as pause near Quinn’s door. 

Years have ingrained their pattern into Quinn’s mind, and she watches the clock, waiting for five minutes to pass before she slides out of her bed and locks the door again. She stands in front of her mirror, a small lamp on, pulling her shirt up and remembering what she saw in her dream-message world, remembering how large her stomach was—will be. She can’t shake the thought that what she experienced were her memories, though there’s no rational explanation for that. There’s no rational explanation for it being a dream, either, though. 

When another fifteen minutes or so has passed, Quinn lets herself crumple to the ground next to her bed and cry like she did in Finn’s living room. She doesn’t know how to stop crying, but she remembers that she cried easily, the entire time she was pregnant. She also doesn’t really know what to do next, because her plan had been to slowly introduce to Finn the fact that it was Puck with whom she’d slept. She’d planned to plead with Puck to keep quiet and keep away from her for a few more weeks, while she got Finn past the initial anger and hurt. 

All she wants is for Finn to not break up with her, and to get an acceptance letter to Yale. Even as she whispers it out loud, she knows that’s not completely true. She wants Finn to be happy, which involves having Puck as his best friend, and another part of mind reminds her of the looks on Puck’s face, when Beth was born and when they signed the papers and when he got back from juvie and when he told her that he’d slept with Shelby Corcoran. She doesn’t actually want to see those looks again, either. 

Quinn nearly falls asleep sitting up twice before she makes herself turn off the lamp and crawl back into bed. The alarm is set early enough that she’ll have plenty of time to unlock the door, and if she takes long enough in the shower, she won’t have to see her father at all in the morning. 

That’s exactly what she manages, dawdling in the shower and the bathroom until she hears her father go downstairs, and dawdling in her room until she hears the garage door open. Even a week ago—or a week and eighteen months ago—Quinn had been scared of her father at times, and now she feels even more motivated to avoid him completely. While she waits in her room, she takes her smallest piece of luggage and fills it up with some of the things she wants to take with her, depositing the bag inside her Cheerios duffel bag. 

Quinn promises her mom she’ll eat her instant oatmeal on the way to school, but in reality Quinn knows she won’t be able to eat until at least lunchtime. The few pregnancy websites she’s snuck looks at talk about how morning sickness doesn’t last only in the morning, but for Quinn, it does seem worse in the morning. At least by lunchtime, she can handle eating some food. 

From the expression on everyone’s faces as Quinn walks down the hall, and the way that the crowds part, Quinn knows that her head Cheerio face and reputation are firmly in place, and that there are no rumors about her or her relationship with Finn. The first thing she wants to do before homeroom is decide where she should leave her things, and she sets off down the halls looking for someone, hoping she’ll have an idea. 

The first person she sees instead is Puck, who is more blue and bruised than anything else, and she gasps in spite of herself. “Oh!” 

Puck turns towards her, and she can’t put a name to the emotion in his eyes. There’s anger and loss and desire, but it’s nothing like the way he looked at her the night they had sex, and Quinn only sees the desire flicker when his eyes glance away from her face—probably at her stomach. The anger and the loss stay, and he jerks his head towards an empty classroom. Quinn starts to walk away, but she follows him, because she knows this exact moment _is_ her fault, for lying to Finn after she had sex with Puck and for lying to Finn when she told him she was pregnant. 

“You told him,” Puck says as soon as the door closes. “You told me to keep my mouth shut, and then you told him!” 

“It was my decision,” Quinn says. “And I was going to let you know today. I thought it was better that I tell him now, after all.” 

“Uh-huh.” Puck stares at Quinn, and she can’t decide if the anger or loss is predominant. He stares for so long that Quinn starts to feel uncomfortable, and she decides to leave the classroom, because her duffel bag feels heavy on her shoulder. Puck doesn’t move as she walks to the door, and she almost doesn’t hear him as she opens it. “Do you need anything?” 

Quinn doesn’t look at him, shaking her head and blinking back the sudden tears that reappear. “Not right now,” she says after at least thirty seconds pass, and then she fully opens the door and goes back into the hall. 

She only gets about twenty feet away before she spots the back of Mercedes’s head, and she speeds up, hurrying to fall into step with her. It isn’t until after the happy “Mercedes!” comes out of her mouth that Quinn remembers the older-her is the one who is friends with Mercedes, not early sophomore year-her. 

“Uh. Hi… Quinn?” Mercedes says, looking at her suspiciously. 

Quinn manages not to wince or smile in too friendly of a way, but she does summon up her head cheerleader smile. “I wanted to talk to you about… glee club!” 

“Oh. Okay,” Mercedes says. “What about it?”

“I think you shouldn’t let Rachel have any solos without challenging her for them. Every single one,” Quinn says. “There’s no reason that she should be the de facto female lead of New Directions.” As she talks, she steers Mercedes with her towards a less populated hallway. 

“Okaaayyy,” Mercedes says, sounding even more suspicious. “I agree about that, but why do _you_ care?”

“Mercedes, if you were me, would you want your boyfriend always singing opposite someone so moony over him?” Quinn asks. 

“Well, no, probably not,” Mercedes concedes. 

“I’ll back you up, and I’ll tell Santana and Brittany to back you up, too,” Quinn says, and when they get even farther down the hall, she stops, turning to look at Mercedes. 

“If this is just about keeping Rachel away from Finn, why don’t you just go for the solos yourself?” Mercedes asks. “What’s the catch?”

Quinn looks around before lowering her voice. “I’m not as good of a singer as you are,” she admits, “and I need your help.” 

“You don’t really think Finn would pick Rachel over you? I mean, she’s got a good voice, but you’re Quinn Fabray,” Mercedes says. 

“I _know_ he could. Can you keep something for me?” 

“What?” 

“It’s just a bag.” Quinn unzips her Cheerios duffel bag and pulls her smaller bag out of it. “Please?” 

“Okay,” Mercedes says. “Why do you need me to keep it?”

“I can’t tell you now.” Quinn keeps her smile fixed on her face. “You’ll know sooner or later.” 

“This isn’t anything illegal, right?” 

Quinn shakes her head. “It’s just clothes.”

“Okay,” Mercedes says. “I think this is kinda strange, though.”

“I’m sure it is. I can tell you more in a few days or a week. Somewhere not at school,” Quinn says, looking around, and her memories of herself, older, and of Mercedes’s kindness combine to make her smile genuinely at Mercedes. “Thank you.” 

Mercedes's return smile is a little less suspicious. “You’re welcome, Quinn,” she says. 

“I’ll see you during glee club,” Quinn says as the bell rings, and she shifts her face back to her Cheerios smile as she turns away from Mercedes and heads towards her first class. She remembers the way Mercedes invited her to live with her, and she remembers the way Mercedes was treated by Rachel over the years, and Quinn thinks that she might need to take a chance and tell Mercedes everything, or at least everything current. She almost can’t believe that Finn believed her, and the more people she tells, the more chance that someone will disbelieve her. Still, Quinn can tell Mercedes about the baby, about her ‘fear’ of being kicked out, about Finn and Puck, and maybe she can move a little closer to having her friend back. 

Because that’s what stands out to Quinn as she goes to classes and answers people’s faux concern about her health after her car accident. What her older dream self had was a group of friends, and even when Quinn had tried to pull away, they had pulled her back, supported her, and celebrated with her. She had friends, and now she’s back in 2009 without most of them and with a boyfriend who is very angry at her. 

She misses her friends. She misses how happy she felt after Sectionals senior year. She misses how happy they all were when Kurt returned from Dalton. She misses the way she felt being Finn’s prom date. She enjoys the way the people in the halls move aside for her, and she likes the way she seems to inspire fear, but she misses the other side of that, the way she had people move aside at the same time she had friends. 

It’s an uncomfortable realization, and her classes don’t distract her from it, because she remembers the material, though not the exact lectures or discussions. Glee club, with Rachel protesting about the one solo Mr. Schuester’s attempted to give to Tina, doesn’t distract her either, because the only competition solo Quinn can remember Tina having in her dream was the competition where Rachel was suspended and unable to perform. Quinn feels like that should probably change, too, but she’s more immediately concerned with Mercedes getting at least equal time. Mercedes might not have acted yet, but Quinn remembers the kindness Mercedes showed her, and she remembers how Mercedes was ignored multiple times in favor of Rachel’s tantrums and threats of lawyers that her dads know. 

Disoriented by the accident and her memories, Quinn almost forgets that it’s a Friday and there’s a football game, and she laughs into her locker as she changes, knowing what performance is coming. The game plays out exactly as she remembers, and she grins into her pompom at Kurt’s excitement. Maybe she should try to convince him to stay on the football team when Puck, Matt, and Mike rejoin it, or even better, she should get Finn and Puck to convince him. 

Her eyes scan the field, looking for things she might have missed the first time she watched the aftermath of the game, and she sees Puck smiling towards where Finn and the others have Kurt hoisted on their shoulders, and she briefly has the thought that it’s too bad Puck wouldn’t date a boy, because that would very nicely keep him occupied with someone far better suited for him than a lesbian or Rachel Berry either one could ever be. Then she remembers what happened in her dream, how Finn came over to kiss her, and she runs to the locker room before anyone can expect Finn to make his way to the sidelines. 

She’ll call him or go to his house the next day, but the last thing Quinn Fabray wants is a confrontation of any kind on the football field in front of classmates and parents. She drives her rental car home and tries to determine how many pieces of luggage she can remove from her closet before her mother or father notice, and how many of those will fit in the trunk of her rental car. Puck keeps offering to help; she’ll send him home with some of her things, but no underwear or CDs or electronics, just books and t-shirts and dresses. 

She stops in the kitchen and puts two of her father’s protein shakes in her Cheerios bag just before her mother enters the kitchen and suggests that she eat a rice cake as a post-game snack. Quinn musters a smile and agrees as her mother starts telling her about their weekend plans. The only thing Quinn registers is that by lunchtime, her mother and father will be gone from the house, and they won’t be back until late. It’s the perfect chance for her to pack, load the trunk, and take some of it to Puck, and then she can stop and talk to Finn again in person. 

Quinn locks the bathroom door and drinks one of the protein shakes quickly, taking a shower to rinse off before drinking the second, and she puts both empty containers in her duffel bag. She’ll have to throw them away at school on Monday. When she hears her parents go to their bedroom, she walks downstairs quietly, pausing in the kitchen long enough to give her answer of ‘just getting a drink of water’ if they ask. They don’t, though, and she spreads peanut butter on top of her rice cake from earlier before doing the same to a second one. Her mother’s weight control efforts on Quinn’s behalf at dinner are not compatible with pregnancy. 

Saturday morning is spent like it always is, talking over breakfast with her father and doing her nails with her mother, but after they leave, Quinn pulls out all of her luggage except one carry-on hard-sided suitcase, which will hold enough clothes for three or four days, what she plans to wear for the next week or two, over and over, until she officially gets kicked out. Quinn fills the luggage with what she wants to keep and slowly carries it one piece at a time to her rental car, then she takes two empty boxes from the recycling. 

Tape from her father’s study gives her two small but sturdy boxes for her favorite books, and a third box gets the tape treatment for her CDs and DVDs. By two-thirty in the afternoon, she has everything packed and loaded, mostly in the trunk, and she leaves, heading for Puck’s first. 

Quinn is already parked and out of her car when she realizes that Finn’s truck is also there. She starts to climb back into the car and drive away, but there’s a chance that Finn or Puck or both of them have already seen her, and maybe it’s better if they all air things out in one space. Full of what she can admit internally is false bravado, Quinn swings one bag over her shoulder and marches up to Puck’s door to knock. 

Nothing happens for thirty seconds after she knocks twice, so she knocks again, harder, and this time the door swings open with an angry looking Puck holding onto the handle. 

“What do you— Quinn?” Puck says. 

“Quinn?” Finn says, from behind Puck. 

“This is convenient,” Quinn says, pushing past them and walking into Puck’s living room. “I needed to speak to both—oh, for heaven’s sake!” Finn is holding a bag of frozen peas on his eye and has a bloody nose, and while Puck was already so black and blue that no bruises stand out, his lip is freshly split. “Really?”

“If you came over to have sex with him again, it’s fine, I’m leaving anyway,” Finn says.

“No, you aren’t. Sit down,” Quinn says, pointing to the sofa. “Yes, you too, Puck.” Puck glowers as he sits down next to Finn, who looks just as sullen as Puck, even with one eye covered by a bag of frozen vegetables. “I came _over_ here to make Puck store some of my things.” 

“What?” Puck asks. “Storage?” 

“Before my parents kick me out.” 

“Why are your parents kicking you out?” Finn asks. “Do they know?”

“Not yet, but when they find out, they will. Remember what I told you?” Quinn asks. 

“About—” Finn lowers his voice to a whisper, “the angel?”

“Yes,” Quinn says quietly as she nods, and she looks towards Puck, who looks somehow sullen, interested, and bored at the same time. “And I don’t want to lose all of my things because I only have a few hours because someone was _singing_ about it!” 

“Huh?” Finn says. 

“‘Having My Baby’ is not the way to announce something ever!” Quinn says, feeling more upset as she remembers the way her parents found out in the dream. 

“You were going to sing ‘Having My Baby’?” Puck asks Finn incredulously. “Why would you do that?” 

“No. I don’t know what either of you are talking about!” Finn says. 

“Not you-you, the other-you,” Quinn says. “I think I found out later it was your brother’s idea.” 

“He doesn’t have a brother!” 

“Yeah! That hasn’t happened yet!” Finn insists. 

“But you already know—nevermind,” Quinn says. “I’m getting off-track. It’s probably best you’re both here. We can discuss a few things.” 

“Fine,” Finn says, slumping back against the sofa. 

“Like what?” Puck asks, and he doesn’t seem to realize he’s mirroring Finn’s movements when he falls back in the exact same way as Finn, only twenty seconds later. 

“This doesn’t have to be anyone’s business but yours, you know,” Quinn says. “I think it’s best that I give her up for ad—”

“ _Her_?” Puck interrupts. “How do you know it’s a girl?” He nudges Finn, like he’s forgotten that they’re mad at each other. “How does she know it’s a girl?” 

“The _angel_ ,” Finn hisses back at him. “I _told_ you.”

Puck shakes his head, but he narrows his eyes at Finn and then Quinn’s stomach. “Fine. Go on.” 

“I think it’s best that I give her for adoption, but we can figure out a way to have some contact that does not involve you sleeping with her adoptive mother, Puck.” 

“Why would I—I sleep with cougars, not my own baby’s mom!” 

Finn frowns and slumps back even more aggressively. “You’d sleep with _anybody_.”

“Would not,” Puck says. “I wouldn’t sleep with anyone who wasn’t hot.” 

Finn makes a _pfft_ sound. “Yeah, you would,” he says. “You so would.”

“I wouldn’t sleep with Sylvester,” Puck says. “Or Suzy Pepper.” 

“You’d sleep with Ms. Pillsbury, though, I bet, and she could be a baby’s mom. She’s old enough!”

“No she couldn’t, because babies pee.” 

“Stop!” Quinn orders. “I was _saying_ that since Finn and I are the two dating, there’s no reason other people have to be involved in our business.” 

“Puck’s involved,” Finn says. 

“Outside the three of us. That’s what I mean,” Quinn says. 

“So I can store your stuff and sign the paperwork and keep quiet while you and Finn act like it’s Finn’s?” Puck asks. 

Finn shakes his head hard. “I don’t want that. I don’t want to do that.”

“I didn’t say we had to pretend it was Finn’s. I think we don’t have to make an announcement at the next football game, either. And you two need to make sure Kurt stays on the team.” 

“You want _two_ boyfriends,” Puck says. 

“Isn’t he kinda, you know. _Gay_? To be her boyfriend?” Finn says to Puck. 

“I don’t think she wants Kurt to be her boyfriend, just to play football,” Puck says. “She wants you to be her boyfriend but she doesn’t want me to go away, either.” 

“Oh,” Finn says. “Yeah, I guess that makes more se— _hey!_ ”

“What is it, Finn?” Quinn asks. 

“You want _both_ of us to be your boyfriend!”

“Yeah, and probably not to sleep with anyone else, either,” Puck says, looking put out. “You want us to be your boyfriends and not have sex at all.” 

Quinn rolls her eyes. “I didn’t actually say that, and you’d survive. Or you could have sex with each other.” 

“Hey!” Finn says again. 

“At least you’re hot.” Puck glances at Finn, then at Quinn briefly before looking at Finn again. “We could all have sex.” 

“No one is having sex with anybody! No one should have been having sex with anybody,” Quinn says, shaking her head. 

“But there was sex, so let’s move on from that point. Why not have more sex? We can’t get you pregnant again,” Puck says. 

“Dude!” Finn says, smacking Puck in the arm. “Not cool!”

“I can’t get you pregnant either,” Puck says, punching Finn’s leg. 

“Stop!” Quinn demands. “There will be no sex _today_. Or tomorrow. Today we are _talking_.” She knows she should tell them that she doesn’t actually mean that she wants them both to be her boyfriend, that that wasn’t what she meant, but she can’t quite bring herself to say it, and part of her is sure that saying it would be a lie. 

“Adoption. Two boyfriends. Storage. Your parents. What else?” Puck asks. 

“Yeah, what else did the angel tell you in your angel-vision?” Finn says. 

“Yale,” Quinn says softly. “I got into Yale.” 

“Wow. Like Harvard Yale?” Finn asks. 

“The Ivy League Yale, yes,” Quinn says. “And I want to get that acceptance letter again.” 

“You’re smart, yeah. What about us if you go to Yale, since you want us to be your boyfriends?” Puck asks. “I don’t want to be a bayman on a boat.” 

“Why would you be on a boat?” Finn asks Puck. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s what people in New England do. Billy Joel said so. Fishing on boats in Long Island Sound,” Puck says. “And you’d get cold. And whine about it.” 

“You two could go to the University of Connecticut or something,” Quinn says, then shakes her head. “I cannot believe I am entertaining this idea.” 

“You really want us to all go to college in the same place?” Finn asks. 

“She wants two boyfriends. _I_ think she even wants us all to have sex,” Puck says. 

“I didn’t say that!” Quinn says, putting her hands on her hips and glaring at Puck. 

“She didn’t say she _didn’t_ want two boyfriends,” Puck says to Finn. “If we agree to this, does that mean we each have a girlfriend and a boyfriend?” 

“I don’t agree to this!” Finn says. “This is all just crazy! I just came over here because you were whining!”

“I wasn’t whining!” 

“It does maybe work with my—with the angel,” Quinn says, almost under her breath. She stares at the floor and then looks at Finn. “Puck’s your best friend, right?” 

“Yeah,” Finn says, looking askance at Puck, and somehow suspicious at the same time.

“And look at him. He looks disappointed,” Quinn says, and she isn’t stretching the truth—Puck does look somewhat disappointed at Finn’s assertion that he doesn’t agree. Finn scowls and stands up, dropping the melted bag of peas to the sofa.

“If you two want to get together again, that’s fine by me,” Finn says. “Don’t let me stop you.” He storms to the door and out it before Quinn or Puck can say anything, and Puck is only half-standing by the time the door closes behind Finn. 

Puck glances at Quinn. “We can’t actually fuck. He didn’t mean that.” 

“I know that!” Quinn snaps. “Do you really think your crazy idea would work?” 

“All three of us?” Puck grins for the first time since she arrived, then starts to nod. “It’s a win-win-win.” 

“Oh my—shut up,” Quinn says, gesturing for Puck to follow her out the door and to the rental car. 

“You like the idea, and you’re mad because you like it,” Puck says factually as he picks up the two boxes of books. 

Quinn slams the door to the backseat closed, leaving the CDs and DVDs in the floorboard, and she angrily puts most of her luggage on the sidewalk, leaving one bag to ask Mercedes to take. “I hate you both!” she says as Puck comes back outside and she closes the trunk. 

“No. You don’t,” Puck says, shrugging and picking up two of her bags. “See you Monday.” 

“Yes. I do,” Quinn says quietly to herself, but she doesn’t stay, getting in the rental car and driving away. With her parents out for the evening, she can get a real meal and not one of her mother’s low-calorie suggestions. 

 

Quinn forces herself not to think about Finn or Puck either one the rest of the day, and on Sunday, she spends three hours finishing her school assignments for the week. She does everything she has to do to keep her parents from guessing that anything is going on, except for going to bed earlier than she would have just a month or two before. 

As she drives to school the next morning, Quinn realizes that she has to think about Puck _and_ Finn, because it’s going to begin to be apparent that something is happening involving all three of them. Even if no one else knows she’s pregnant, she can’t imagine that there will be a complete lack of tension. She needs to give her CDs and DVDs to Mercedes, and she needs to pretend to pay attention in class. Mercedes is nowhere to be found before homeroom, however, and spending the class going over the potential advantages of two boyfriends makes her look interested, though she’s not sure if attentive is accompanying it. 

Two boyfriends is not something that a good church-going girl is supposed to have, Quinn knows, but she’s also pregnant, and as far as transgressions go, having two boyfriends seems almost milder. It would keep Finn occupied and far less likely to stray with Rachel, and Puck wouldn’t be tempted to date Rachel or use Mercedes even for a week. The disadvantages are—well, Quinn can’t really figure out where the disadvantage is, practically speaking, though she knows socially it could go either way. It could be perceived as her being alluring enough and special enough to keep two boys happy, or it could be that everyone will simply whisper about her sleeping with both of them every night. 

Or, Quinn acknowledges as she heads towards lunch, it could be both. The smell from the cafeteria overwhelms her before she can control her breathing or even enter the room, and she runs to the bathroom instead, barely making it into a stall. After the first wave passes, she reaches behind her and locks the door, and she stays in the stall until she thinks everyone who might have heard her retching has left the bathroom. 

She rinses her mouth and carefully pats her face dry, studying her reflection and redoing her ponytail before leaving the bathroom and heading towards the cafeteria again. This time, she breathes through her mouth and makes it through the line and to her usual table, where no one requires her to really engage in the conversation. Maybe she can stop Mercedes after school and let her take the rest of Quinn’s packed things, even if she is no closer to resolving things with Finn and Puck, or even completely sure how she wants things to resolve. 

A little thinking and a question of Kurt in English class gives Quinn Mercedes’s last class as well as a very suspicious look from Kurt, so Quinn doesn’t mention how he should stay on the football team to him at that moment. After her last class, Quinn hurries towards the area of Mercedes’s class and catches up to her just before Mercedes turns towards her locker. 

“Mercedes,” Quinn says as she pivots to change directions in the hallway. 

“Hi, Quinn,” Mercedes says. She looks and sounds less suspicious than she had previously, but the dubious look still isn’t entirely gone. 

“I have Cheerios practice for an hour, but could we talk after that?” Quinn asks. 

“Sure,” Mercedes says. “Is everything alright?”

Quinn looks around the hallways before shaking her head. “I’m trying to make sure it will be. Meet me in the parking lot?” 

“Okay. I can do that,” Mercedes says.

“Thanks,” Quinn says, steeling herself for Cheerios practice. If her memories hold true, she won’t have trouble in practice, but she’s already changed things. She gets through practice, though, and she hurries through changing, buying a pack of peanut butter crackers from the vending machine before going out to the parking lot, looking around for Mercedes and then angling towards her. “Cracker?” Quinn offers, holding the half-eaten pack towards Mercedes. 

“Thanks,” Mercedes says, taking a cracker. 

“I have a box and a suitcase that I don’t trust either of them with,” Quinn says, walking towards the rental car, and only as she says it does she realize Mercedes probably doesn’t know exactly what she means. 

“Either of who?” 

“Would you want either Finn or Puck to have your CDs in their possession?” Quinn asks as brightly as she can. 

“No, probably not,” Mercedes says. “But why them? I mean, I know Finn’s your boyfriend, but why would you have Puck keep things for you?”

Quinn opens the trunk while she tries to decide what to say. “Because he offered to help,” she says as she turns back around, and as odd as it sounds, she realizes it truly is part of why. “My parents are going to kick me out.” 

“ _Why?_ ” Mercedes asks. “I thought your family was like one of those TV families!”

“They don’t know they will yet,” Quinn says, and she pulls on her memories from later on to make herself smile sardonically. “Why do good girls get kicked out, Mercedes?” 

“I don’t know. You’re pretty much little miss perfect. Did they catch you making out with Finn or something?”

“Perfect girls don’t get in trouble.” Quinn picks up her suitcase and the box, shutting the trunk. “I’ll be off the Cheerios, too, but that’ll take longer.” 

“Quinn. What did you do?” Mercedes asks. 

Quinn pretends to study her nails, looking around the parking lot briefly. “I’m pregnant, Mercedes.” 

Mercedes'smouth drops open. “Uh- _uh_. No you’re not!”

“Oh, I am,” Quinn says grimly. “Would I start moving all of my things out otherwise?” 

“But that’s crazy! You and Finn?”

Quinn can feel the slight wince on her face. “Let’s say that things are complicated.” 

Mercedes puts her hand up to her mouth. “Oh my word, Quinn! And your parents don’t know yet!”

“I probably have at least another week. Through Invitationals.” Quinn frowns a little to herself, because she can’t remember if Mr. Schuester’s mentioned Invitationals or not. “Remember when Mr. Schuester mentioned them?” she adds. 

Mercedes tilts her head to the side. “Sort of?”

“I’m sure he’ll bring them up again tomorrow.” Maybe Quinn will just appear all-knowing instead of too prescient. She is still, for however long, the head cheerleader. “I don’t know when my parents will find out, though, so I’m trying to be ready.” 

“That makes sense,” Mercedes says, nodding her head. “Do you have everything you need? You’re going to a doctor, right?”

“Once so far. Did you know they don’t really want to see you that often until you’re farther along?” Quinn shrugs. “I’ll go to the health department after this, though.” 

“You just… just take care of yourself, alright?” Mercedes says. 

“I will,” Quinn says more confidently than she feels. “Everything’s going to work out. I’m making sure of that.” 

“I sure hope so,” Mercedes says. She puts her hand on Quinn’s shoulder and squeezes lightly.

“Thanks, Mercedes,” Quinn says, mustering up another smile. “I’ll see you at glee club tomorrow.” 

“Okay, Quinn. I’ll see you then.”

Quinn remembers April Rhodes, of course, but part of her mind thinks that there was more drama surrounding Rachel the first time. She can’t put her finger on it exactly and decides to ignore it, because as long as Finn isn’t with Rachel—and he doesn’t seem to be—she can let Finn and Puck stew and think for a week. She needs the time to take care of other things. 

Namely, she needs money. She has an account of her own that her father transfers her allowance into at the beginning of each month, and she hopes she can make it through November before leaving. It’s still not enough, though, so she begins asking for cash on Monday evening, starting with her mother. 

“But what do you need all the money for, Quinnie?” her mother asks.

“It’s for the glee club. Mr. Schuester needs fifty for our Invitationals costumes, twenty to cover our transportation to Sectionals, and the rest will make the Fabrays the top boosters,” Quinn says. “It’s very important to Finn, the glee club.” 

“Oh, well that’s fine, then,” Quinn’s mother says. “It’s so nice that you and Finn can both participate in an activity together like this!”

“Exactly,” Quinn says, nodding and doing her best head cheerleader smile and voice. “Mr. Schuester’s taking advice from Coach Sylvester about how to best manage the club’s money, too, so the school board can’t steal any of it.” All of Quinn’s Cheerio money has been turned in in cash since the day she made the squad, because that’s how Coach Sylvester likes it, and Quinn can’t help but feel like it’s coming in handy. 

“That’s so smart of him! Coach Sylvester always has run things so smoothly, hasn’t she?” Quinn’s mother smiles and reaches for her pocketbook, taking out her wallet and pulling a stack of bills out of it. 

“It should help make the club a winner,” Quinn agrees, even though she’s certain that the glee club did well in spite of Mr. Schuester, not because of him, and as she accepts the cash from her mother, she reminds herself to add ‘have set list for Nationals before we get to New York’ to her list of things to change. 

Quinn waits until Wednesday night, while her mother is still at Ladies’ Bible Study, to approach her father. She asks for more money and says it’s for cheerleading, and then once that money is in her hand, she adds in a whisper that she needs a little more “for lady things.” 

Her father turns bright red, just as she expects, and hands her a fifty straight from his wallet. “Thank you, Daddy!” Quinn says with a smile, then leaves the study and goes straight to her room. 

The problem with accumulating cash is that she doesn’t know where to keep it, unless she opens up a different bank account. Maybe she can pull together a third box of books and hide the cash in an envelope between the books, as she can’t imagine Puck going through a box of books randomly, or Finn, if she were to give the box to him. 

Once Invitationals is over on Saturday afternoon, Quinn knows she has to talk to Puck and Finn again. She feels somewhat horrified with herself that she’s seriously contemplating Puck’s proposal that the three of them be together, and despite her initial statements about sex, if Puck is having sex with Finn, he’s not having sex anywhere else. She and Puck can make sure Finn feels far more appreciated than Rachel Berry ever could make him feel, and in the end, shallowly, Quinn likes the idea of having both of them, one on either arm. 

She waits until after glee club rehearsal ends on Thursday afternoon to send the two of them a short text. 

_Dinner at Breadstix after invitationals. Be there._

Puck’s response comes only a minute later, sent to both of them: _okay_.

Finn doesn’t respond for a full thirty minutes, and Quinn can practically hear him being stubborn through the phone: _ok_.

Quinn studies the screen for a few moments, all three of their messages in one place, and she looks at it again during class the next morning. It’s the oddest thing and nothing she would have considered, but it might work, and the next time she looks at her phone, she smiles a little. 

Invitationals goes exactly as it did in her memories, which Quinn interprets as meaning that some things are fixed. Either that, or Rachel Berry’s desire to be the star will always win out in some way. Quinn removes the tie from her costume but decides to wear the rest of it to Breadstix. Her chances to wear jeans with an actual waistband are numbered enough that she can take advantage of them. Not changing means that she’s at Breadstix ahead of both Finn and Puck, and she asks for a booth out of the way while she waits, absently hoping that maybe the two of them put aside their pride enough to ride together. 

They do arrive at the same time, but clearly stubbornness won out as far as actually talking on the drive. Quinn doesn’t let herself smile, but she feels a spike of amusement at the way they’re ignoring each other with their body language from the neck up, but the rest of their bodies are turned toward each other. She lifts one hand when they walk in, and Puck nudges Finn before pointing towards her, seemingly without thinking about it. 

Finn walks in Quinn’s direction, pointedly sliding into the booth across from her, then looking up at Puck, down at the seat next to him, and then across to the empty space next to Quinn. He looks like he didn’t realize until he sat down that it meant one of them would end up sitting next to Puck. Puck doesn’t sit next to either of them, though, pulling a chair up to the end of the table and sitting there, even though it’s a booth for four. 

“Here we are,” Puck says unnecessarily. 

“Yes. Thank you. Should we order first?” 

Finn shrugs. “That’s fine,” he says. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

“Is it so bad that I wish you’d actually smile more?” Quinn asks, since the server is nowhere near their table. “You didn’t in my coma-thing, either.” 

“What’s there to smile about?” Finn asks her. 

“Invitationals? And even when you said you were happy, you weren’t smiling.” She looks at Puck. “If he were really happy, wouldn’t he _smile_?” 

Puck looks at Finn even though he’s answering Quinn. “If he’s not smiling, he’s not really happy,” he agrees. 

“Will you two quit it?” Finn says. “So I’m not happy. So what? Like either one of you really care about me being happy.”

“I do,” Quinn says almost indignantly, and it sounds odd to her ears until she realizes Puck said the same words at the same time. 

“Sure you do. You both do, right? You care soooo much,” Finn says, picking up one of the breadsticks and snapping it into little pieces. 

“I wouldn’t be here if it were just Quinn,” Puck says matter-of-factly and without a glance at Quinn, as if he expects that she already knows that. 

“And I wouldn’t have asked you both to be here if it were just Puck,” Quinn admits. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t believe that.” 

“Puck said I had to,” Finn says. “I think he was gonna run me over with his car if I didn’t get in.”

Quinn gives Puck an appraising look. “That’s sweet,” she says, then starts to tear up. “Oh for heaven’s sake. I hate pregnancy hormones.” 

“Only your toes,” Puck says to Finn. “Only a little bit.” 

“You could’ve just gone without me,” Finn says.

“No, ‘cause you told us you’d be here, and the whole three people thing doesn’t work if only two people show up,” Puck says with a shake of his head. 

“I think Puck’s idea isn’t the worst one ever,” Quinn says slowly. 

“Well, I don’t know how I feel about it,” Finn says. “I think it’s weird. I don’t think about Puck like that.”

“You’d get double the presents on Valentine’s Day,” Puck says to Finn. “It’s maybe a little weird but we’re a little weird. Quinn excepted. And we’re sort of on a three-person date right now.” 

“That’s true,” Quinn says. “We are.” 

“Only ‘cause Puck made me!” Finn protests. 

“For heaven’s sake, you let him make you, you big scoop of denial!” Quinn says, then bursts into tears. 

“Shit, you made her cry!” Puck hisses. 

“I didn’t mean to!” Finn says. “Don’t cry, Quinn!”

“What’s the worst thing that could happen, Finn?” Quinn asks, still crying in spite of her attempts to stop. 

“People will think we’re _gay_!” Finn says. 

“How can you be gay if you have a girlfriend, too?” Puck asks. 

“No one will think I’m gay,” Quinn says. “Either very lucky or very slutty, or both.” 

“Fine, they’ll think I am, or Puck is, or— or I don’t know! But I don’t want a boyfriend!” Finn insists. “If you want to go out with him, too, that’s fine. I won’t stop you and I won’t break up with you.”

“Oh, yeah, that’ll be great for me,” Puck says sarcastically. “Everyone’ll glare at me, no sex, no double significant other.” 

“I don’t want to go out with him too, I want all of us, the way Puck said,” Quinn says, crossing her arms. The more Finn protests, the more she wants it to happen, and she’s not sure if his protests make her think of reasons why or are just making her stubborn. Potentially a combination of both. “Plus you’re making him sad.” 

“I probably deserve a little bit of being sad,” Puck says quietly. 

“Yeah. What he said!” Finn says. 

“ _I_ don’t like either of you being sad. Who’s running things, boys?”

“You,” Puck says.

“You?” Finn asks. 

“Me. We’ll shelve this discussion for now and have an enjoyable meal, and the two of you can take me out again next Saturday night. Understood?” Quinn asks. Puck nods and looks down at his menu. 

“Okay, Quinn,” Finn says. 

Quinn smiles. “Thank you,” she says, then looks at her own menu. Even though she usually gets the same thing at Breadstix, she keeps wanting more protein now that’s pregnant, and she orders a chicken pasta dish instead of her usual meal. Even though Puck does in fact look sad, and even though Finn looks somewhat sullen, Quinn realizes midway through her meal that being there with the two of them does make her happy—and maybe that’s not the worst thing. 

 

Quinn spends Sunday doing her homework. It takes far less time than it did the first time around, even including the hour it takes to reproduce an English paper on _The Scarlet Pimpernel_. Her bags packed for school, for Cheerios, and one more bag of small keepsakes tucked into her Cheerios bag, she pulls out her list of things to change, to evaluate it again. She still doesn’t know if dating _both_ Finn and Puck—and the two of them being involved as well—is the best option, but as she reviews her list, she comes to a somewhat startling conclusion. It doesn’t precisely interfere with any of her stated goals, and in some cases, she wonders if it might help. 

Remembering senior-Quinn, she knows that she didn’t completely detest Rachel Berry, because she had, in the end, agreed to be a bridesmaid, and she had tried her best to be a teammate, at least, their junior years. Sophomore-Quinn, though, can’t understand or believe it, even with the memories in the forefront of her brain, and she mentally reviews everything she knows about Rachel. Most of her distaste, Quinn concludes, stems from Rachel’s treatment of others, especially Finn. Senior-Quinn was somehow not really jealous, but still disapproving, and sophomore-Quinn is jealous _and_ somewhat horrified by how unhappy the Finn in her memory was, even with the seeming promise of marriage and his whole life in front of him. 

That makes her remember the somewhat-hopeless look on Puck’s face at times throughout their high school years in her dream, and worse, she remembers Puck saying that he thought he’d be dead or in jail by age thirty. Quinn starts crying suddenly, no doubt a side effect of her pregnancy hormones, but in her mind, she can only see Rachel as to blame for that, too. The Finn that is best friends with Puck, the Finn who even now is horribly upset with Puck but will still ride with him and be seen with him, wouldn’t have let that comment pass. Rachel Berry had distracted Finn, but Finn still wasn’t happy. 

Quinn isn’t sure what any of that means, other than that other people really will benefit from Quinn’s plans, and she continues down the list, staring at a few of the entries on it. After some thought, she adds one line at the bottom of it, in thicker writing than her usual hand: **Find someone other than Shelby to adopt Beth**. Whatever Shelby’s best intentions had been, she had suddenly reintroduced Beth into their lives, and vice versa, after more than a year, and then slept with the still-teenage father of her adoptive daughter! Senior-Quinn’s indignation mingles with sophomore-Quinn’s disgust, and Quinn realizes that Beth needs someone different as her mother. She isn’t sure who, but there has to be someone. 

As Quinn gets ready for bed on Sunday night, she mentally goes over what she can remember happening before, this week that is both over two years past and still upcoming. She had been scheduled for an ultrasound, where she’d found out Beth was a girl, but Quinn had cancelled that on Thursday morning. There’s no need to pay for something that would only tell her what she already knows, and the awkwardness of taking Finn and Puck to an appointment is something she’ll put off as long as she possibly can. She remembers, too, a confrontation with Rachel, about Finn and glee club, and _that_ Quinn won’t mind at all, especially not after her earlier thoughts on Rachel Berry’s role in their lives. 

That particular thought makes Quinn stop in the middle of brushing her teeth, staring at her reflection. _Their_ lives? Three of them? When had her brain decided that was such a good idea? She can’t deny that the three of them are already more intertwined than in her dream, and there was certainly a great deal of connection there, but the fierce way her body and mind are reacting to perceived threats to both Finn and Puck isn’t something she really expected at all. 

Quinn continues thinking about the week ahead, the split in the glee club, and how originally she had sent Puck away from Mr. Schuester’s group, at Coach’s urging. This time, however, Quinn won’t do that. She’ll whisper to Puck not to mention his own Jewishness—which won’t be that difficult, all things considered—and then mention Rachel’s instead. If things work according to Quinn’s new plan, it will leave Puck, Quinn, and Finn as the only three working with Mr. Schuester. 

The other thing that she knows is coming is Jacob ben Israel publishing online the story of Quinn’s pregnancy. Quinn doesn’t know how she could possibly stop that, or if she should try, so she decides not to attempt it. It will hurt, and she’ll spend the entire week on pins and needles, waiting for it to happen, but it has to happen at some point, and at least this time, she’ll be prepared, her game face and Cheerios smile plastered on. 

Other than their glee club work, Quinn decides that she’ll try to give Finn and Puck some space until their date on Saturday night. She pulls Puck aside on Monday morning, and he looks at her, somewhat confused, but doesn’t say anything, waiting for her to speak. 

“Don’t say anything this week about being Jewish,” Quinn whispers. “Just this week. I’ll be using Rachel’s Jewishness to send her with Coach Sylvester when Coach and Mr. Schuester split up the glee club under Figgins’ orders.” 

Puck snorts. “That’ll go well for Rachel and Sylvester.”

“Who knows. Who cares,” Quinn says dismissively, and Puck’s face alters. 

“You’re changing that,” he says very quietly. “You don’t know what will happen when you change that.” 

Quinn nods slightly. “Sometimes, some things have to be better than before,” she says, and Puck returns the nod, slipping out of the side hallway without another word. 

Aside from that brief encounter, Quinn doesn’t speak directly to Puck or Finn except when they’re in a group with other people, including the impromptu singing in the choir room that reminds Quinn of why they all joined the glee club and why they stick with it. It’s after ‘Ride Wit Me’ ends and ‘Sue’s Kids’ vacate the room that Quinn realizes she may need to nudge the confrontation with Rachel. It feels important somehow—probably because she does want to warn Rachel off pursuing Finn—and because of that, she leans against Rachel’s locker after Mr. Schuester’s brief rehearsal on Thursday afternoon. 

Before Rachel appears, Puck walks by on his way out of the school. He doesn’t say anything, but he does raise an eyebrow. Quinn huffs, then huffs again as he raises the other one. 

“Fine,” she says. “I need to have words with Rachel. She’ll accuse me of spying on the club for Coach Sylvester. I’ll talk to her about how she’s going after Finn.” 

“You really have lived this before or seen it or whatever,” Puck says slowly. “Can I watch?” 

“No, you cannot watch!” Quinn glares at him. “Go away. Who knows what your presence might change.” Puck rolls his eyes but continues walking, and if Quinn thinks he’s found a place to eavesdrop a hall over, she can’t leave her position by Rachel’s locker to confirm it. After another minute passes, Quinn can hear Rachel’s loafers on the floor, and Quinn straightens as Rachel turns the corner. 

“Oh!” Rachel exclaims, coming to a sudden stop. “Quinn!”

“We’re going to talk now,” Quinn says. “I’m going to tell you a few things, and you’re going to nod and agree.” 

“What? Wh—what are we talking about?” Rachel stammers. 

“About how you’re going to stay away from Finn. I’ve seen how you’re flirting with him, and I know you’re going to keep trying to get him to go out with you. You think you’re entitled to him, the same way you think you’re entitled to all the solos, and there’s no reason you’re entitled to either of them,” Quinn says firmly. 

“Quinn,” Rachel begins, and she’s practically simpering, giving Quinn that fake, condescending smile she usually saves for Mr. Schuester and other people naive enough to fall for it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Finn and I have a _professional_ camaraderie! Surely you can see that I only want what’s best for the _club_.”

“Don’t play Little Miss Innocent with _me_ ,” Quinn snaps. “Your interest in Finn has nothing to do with the glee club, and if you wanted what was best for the glee club, there would be a lot more sharing of solos, now wouldn’t there be?” 

Rachel huffs and puts her hands on her hips. “But I’m _clearly_ the—”

“The most arrogant? The most selfish?” Quinn says, glaring at Rachel. “You threaten to quit and throw tantrums when anyone even _suggests_ that anyone else have a solo. Stop that. You’re intolerable.” 

“Ooh!” Rachel stomps her foot. “You’re one to talk! The way you’re always sneaking around, spying on us for Coach Sylvester, bossing Finn around all the time!”

“Which one of us is stomping her foot?” Quinn asks, her eyebrow raised. One of the changes that Quinn had easily made in her life the ‘second’ time around was not giving Coach Sylvester any information that she didn’t already know or couldn’t easily find out. “I thought your interest in Finn was purely ‘professional’.”

“My professional interest includes keeping him from being distracted by—by— by _distractions_!” Rachel exclaims. 

Quinn laughs, enjoying the way Rachel looks increasingly irritated at Quinn’s laughter. “We’re in high school, Rachel. The glee club is supposed to be fun, not your own little fiefdom.” 

“You have the Cheerios! You’re popular. Everybody likes you,” Rachel says. “Why do you have to come in and ruin _this_?”

“I’m sorry, is glee club limited to only people who aren’t in any other activities at the school?” Quinn says, purposefully making her voice too sweet. “That’s too bad, Rachel. I think you’ll be left with just you and Artie, then.” 

“You’re not ever a very good singer!” Rachel says. 

“I’m going to let Finn know right now that he’s not eligible for the glee club,” Quinn says, willing to call Rachel’s bluff. “In fact, I don’t think you’ll have enough people to compete.” She leans forward to whisper in Rachel’s ear. “Insult me again, and I’ll make sure you don’t ever sing a solo again at this school.” 

“You can’t threaten me,” Rachel says. “You can’t destroy this glee club.”

“Oh, I can, and I could,” Quinn says, “but that’s not what I’m going to do. I’m going to make sure _you_ don’t sing a solo in the glee club.” 

“I’ll tell Mr. Schuester! I’ll tell him you threatened me, that you want to ruin the glee club for everybody!”

Quinn pastes on her perfect Cheerios smile and starts speaking loudly. “Rachel! Stop! I said it was fair to have auditions! You didn’t have to pull my hair!” She loosens her ponytail and then lets out a short scream. “Ow!” 

“But I didn’t touch you!” Rachel shrieks, taking a step back from Quinn. “Why are you doing this?”

“Ow!” Quinn says again, then steps towards Rachel to whisper. “Back off Finn. Back off the solos.” 

“You’re _evil_!” Rachel hisses. 

“You’re immature,” Quinn says with a shrug. “Leave me and mine alone, and we’ll be fine.” 

“I hate you!”

Quinn smiles. “Oh, I have no use for you, either.”

Rachel stomps her foot again, letting out a little squeal that’s just slightly higher pitch than the squeak of her loafers on the linoleum floor, before turning and quickly walking away. Quinn stands in front of Rachel’s locker until she hears a door open and close, and then she turns around in the direction that Puck had gone. 

“Enjoy the show?” Quinn calls, and she hears an answering snort. 

“See you Saturday night,” Puck says, and then Quinn hears his shoes crunching as he walks away. 

Neither Finn nor Puck mention Saturday night to her again until her phone announces a text mid-morning on Saturday. 

_Pick us up @ Finns in 1 hr_ , Puck’s text reads. Quinn shakes her head and spends the next fifty minutes getting ready and preparing a story for her parents before she gets in her now-repaired car and heads over to Finn’s. As she approaches, she sees Puck standing outside next to the small porch, leaning on the house. 

Quinn parks and climbs out of the car, walking to the front door. “Would he not let you in?” 

“Didn’t try,” Puck says. “Thought that was easier.” Quinn rolls her eyes and knocks loudly. Finn opens the door, looking confused.

“Puck’s already here?” Finn asks. 

Puck nods and raises one hand, and Quinn rolls her eyes again. “Apparently so. I’m supposed to pick the two of you up?” 

“You are?” Finn asks. “I thought I was driving.”

“Quinn’s car is safer, remember?” Puck says. “We talked about that.” 

“Do you two even know where we’re going?” Quinn demands. 

“Yeah. We’re going to the Air and Space Museum in Wapokoneta,” Finn says. “Then we’re eating.”

“The _what_?” Quinn asks. “The Armstrong Air and Space Museum?” 

“Yeah, you’re smart, so we figured you’d like a museum,” Puck says, looking pleased with his and Finn’s ingenuity. 

“And, hey! We’re going to this sushi place after. It’s right by the museum!” Finn says, looking equally pleased. 

“Sushi?” Quinn screeches, then covers her face with her hands. “Did either of you stop to remember that I’m _pregnant_?”

“Yeah, that’s why we tried to pick some food you’d like,” Puck says. 

“I can’t eat raw fish!” 

“They can probably cook it,” Finn says, sounding dejected. 

Quinn sighs heavily. “I’ll find something on the menu,” she says. “So I’m driving us to Wapakoneta?” 

“Space!” Finn says excitedly. 

“Right,” Quinn says, nodding and turning to walk back to the car. She can hear Puck whispering to Finn, and Finn nods his head rapidly.

“I know!” Finn whispers back loudly. “We did great!”

Quinn isn’t sure that it’s quite as good as they think, but it is, she has to admit, creative, and at least the two of them are agreeing and not arguing. Once they’re all in the car, Finn hunched over slightly and his legs bent, Quinn turns on the local classic rock station, hoping they will sing along instead of potentially arguing. 

It works, both of them grinning and singing along with the variety of songs, some of which Quinn doesn’t even recognize. When they reach Wapakoneta, Puck is the first out of the car at the museum. 

“They have simulators!” he says, gesturing towards the odd-looking building. 

“It is most beautiful at dusk,” Finn says. He sounds stilted. 

“Are you quoting someone?” Quinn asks. 

“Uhhh. No?”

“He’s quoting the website,” Puck says. “The building’s designed to look like a future something.” 

“Hey!” Finn exclaims, punching Puck in the arm. 

“You were!” 

“Boys!” Quinn says, shaking her head. “I almost hate to ask, but… are we staying until dusk?” 

“Do you have to be home before then?” Finn asks, still glaring at Puck.

“Well, no,” Quinn says. 

“Do you remember what kind of future thingie it was?” Puck whispers loudly to Finn. 

“A _awesome_ future thingie,” Finn says. “With _space_ and stuff.”

“Yeah. An awesome future with space,” Puck agrees. He steps beside Quinn and offers her his arm, gesturing something to Finn. Finn steps up to Quinn’s other side, peering around her at Puck with his eyebrows raised. Puck nods rapidly. Finn takes Quinn’s other arm in his. 

Quinn smiles at both of them and lets them lead her into the museum. It’s very quiet in the museum, and Quinn suspects mid-autumn is not high volume at the Armstrong Air & Space Museum. Finn pays for all of their tickets, then Quinn finds herself opening up a brochure with a map on the second page. 

“It looks like the simulators are at the end?” Quinn says. 

“Oh, hey, look! Sputnik!” Finn says. 

“Is that the one with the monkey?” Puck asks, then looks down at his own map as they walk under the replica. “You know what we should do?” 

“Why do I suspect the answer is not ‘see the movie’?” Quinn replies. 

“We should make out in the Infinity Room! We’ll be able to see ourselves, which’ll make it even more hot,” Puck says, stopping in front of something labeled the ‘Orbit Table’. Quinn looks sharply at Puck, then at Finn, who looks somewhat embarrassed. 

“We can’t make out in the museum!” Quinn says. 

“Okay, can we go _back_ to the Infinity Room after we do the simulators?” Puck asks. “That way, we’re done, if we get kicked out? C’mon, Finn, back me up here.” 

“I kinda want to see the whole museum,” Finn says. 

“ _After_ we’ve seen the whole museum?” Puck persists. “It won’t stop us from seeing the outside at dusk.” 

“I want to see the part with the vampires,” Finn says. 

“What vampires?” Quinn asks, looking questioningly at Finn from across the Orbit Table. 

“The ones at dusk,” Finn says. “Outside.”

“Is there a play?” Quinn asks, then glares at Puck, who seems to be trying not to snicker. “Puck!”

 

“Dusk is twilight!” Puck says. “And _Twilight_ has vampires!” 

“Wait a minute,” Finn says, screwing up his face and scowling at Puck. 

“I thought you realized it was a joke!” Puck says. 

“I didn’t think they were real vampires, but I thought they were real people dressed like vampires!”

“Then we can find a haunted house for next week,” Puck says, then looks suddenly like he’s been caught stealing, and he glances at Quinn before looking slowly back at Finn again. 

“Dude!” Finn says, glaring more intently. “You’ll scare the baby if we take Quinn to a haunted house!”

“Only after fifteen weeks or so,” Quinn says absently. “She can’t hear yet.” 

“See?” Puck says. 

“Did the angel say it was okay? Will it make it mad?” Finn asks. 

“I don’t think the future—the angel—would get mad about a haunted house,” Quinn admits. “We’re just changing the bad things. Spending time together is a good thing, right?” 

“Right?” Finn says. 

“So… if we all want to do something like vampires or a haunted house, that’s probably fine.” 

“Awesome,” Puck says. “Let’s go see the smelly spacesuit. He stayed in it for hours.” 

Quinn rolls her eyes a little, but it’s true that the brochure informs them that Neil Armstrong was in fact in the spacesuit for eleven hours at one point in his life. The museum isn’t that large, and it doesn’t take all that long before they do end up in the Infinity Room, just before the theater. 

“We’re definitely coming back in here,” Puck says. “This is _awesome_.”

“Yeah, it’s really pretty,” Finn says. 

“I don’t think Puck was concerned with looking around when we come back,” Quinn says dryly, and Puck nods. 

“Well, it _is_ pretty,” Finn says. “Isn’t it?”

“It is.” Quinn stops and looks around them, standing between Finn and Puck. “And we do look good,” she concedes. 

“See?” Puck says. “So we should escort Quinn into the theater so we can come back sooner.” 

“Yeah, okay,” Finn says. He offers Quinn his arm. Quinn smiles at both of them, taking each of their arms and letting them lead her into the theater, which has a short video. After the theater, the ‘modern space’ exhibit, and all three of the simulators, Puck turns to them with a big grin. 

“Infinity Room?” he says hopefully. 

“Finn?” Quinn asks. 

“Yeah, I guess so,” Finn says, shifting from foot to foot. 

“Awesome,” Puck says, and this time, he offers Quinn and Finn each an arm. Finn gives Puck an odd look before taking his arm. Puck’s grin gets even wider somehow as Quinn takes Puck’s other arm, and he’s definitely leading them as they go. “ _Now_ we all need to make out.” 

“All of us at once?” Quinn asks. 

“Uh… I don’t think that’ll work, Puck,” Finn says. 

“Yeah, we’ll have to alternate,” Puck agrees, looking completely unperturbed. “You two can go first.” 

“This is still kinda weird,” Finn says, but he does lean his head down to give Quinn a closed-lipped kiss. Quinn kisses him back, but she can more or less feel Puck’s eyes on them. 

“What, me watching you?” Puck asks. 

“Yeah,” Finn replies.

Quinn looks over to see Puck shrug. “So watch us now?” he says, and Quinn takes Finn’s hand and squeezes while she waits for his response. She remembers her senior year, remembers how he was so desperate to feel like a part of something that he was willing to get married at eighteen, and she thinks he probably needs to feel included in every step of whatever it is they’re doing. 

Finn squeezes Quinn’s hand back and nods. “Yeah,” he says softly.

“Cool,” Puck says, and he kisses Quinn then. Quinn thinks that he’s deliberately imitating Finn, keeping it to a closed-mouth kiss and pulling back relatively quickly. Quinn looks over at Finn, who looks wistful, and she smiles at him before taking half a step back. 

Puck steps towards Finn and raises his eyebrow questioningly. Finn looks startled, glancing quickly over at Quinn. Quinn lifts her shoulders and looks between the two of them. 

“Aww, c’mon,” Puck says. 

“Quinn’ll think it’s weird,” Finn says. “Right Quinn?”

“I don’t know if I’ll think it’s weird or not,” Quinn says. “Go ahead.” 

“Really?” Finn asks. 

“You heard her,” Puck says, and he takes another step towards Finn. 

“Oh. Okay,” Finn says. “I mean, I guess I can—”

Puck doesn’t let him finish, putting his mouth over Finn’s and kissing him. Quinn notices immediately that it’s a more involved kiss than the ones either of them gave her, but Finn keeps squeezing her hand and doesn’t pull away. It’s oddly appealing in a way that Quinn would never have expected, and maybe Puck is right—maybe for now, the three of them in some odd configuration really is not just a good idea but the _best_ idea for all of them. 

“See?” Puck says, and Quinn watches Puck take Finn’s other hand. 

“Yeah,” Finn says, his voice just barely above a whisper. 

Quinn waits a good thirty seconds before speaking. “Do we think it’s dusk yet?” 

“Probably,” Finn says. “You want to go outside now?”

“Sure. We can always make out more after sushi,” Puck says with a wide grin. 

Quinn laughs a little. “Is that all he’s going to ask about now?” she says to Finn. 

Finn laughs a little, too. “Yeah. Probably.”

 

Even with the relative success of Saturday—which is true even though Quinn has to order vegetable sushi—Quinn still finds herself nervously reviewing her list on Sunday night. No one has found out that she’s pregnant yet, and there don’t seem to be any rumors. She doesn’t know why the change has taken place, but she isn’t going to complain. Maybe she can relax, just a little. Monday morning does, unfortunately, begin just as Quinn remembers it, though it’s by Quinn’s own design: she’s walking with Finn, and Karofsky slushies them. Quinn doesn’t think she can quite take the week coming, with Coach Tanaka’s ultimatum, if Puck really does date Rachel again, however briefly. She knows she’ll be off the Cheerios by the end of the week. She doesn’t know if Finn will choose football over glee club a second time. She knows her days with a home are dwindling, and all of that pours out in her voice as she yells at Karofsky. 

“This will never get you what you want!” Quinn yells, suddenly furious. “Why do you even think it will? You’re pathetic, David Karofsky! Pathetic and scared and a liar! You pick on other people because you can’t stand to look at yourself in the mirror. None of it will ever work out like this!” Quinn doesn’t even stop to see what Karofsky’s reaction is, or Finn’s for that matter. She wheels around and goes back to her locker, where she has extra clothes and two towels waiting. She cleans off her face and stalks to the bathroom to change, still steaming, and her mood isn’t improved when she leaves the bathroom and sees Puck talking to Rachel—or, she can mentally acknowledge, more like Rachel talking to Puck. 

“You!” she says to Puck. “Come with me!” Puck immediately follows her, and Quinn ignores whatever it is that Rachel is calling after them. Quinn leads him to a hallway and glares. “No!” 

“Jealous?” Puck asks after nearly a minute passes. 

“No,” Quinn says, though she knows it’s probably not horribly convincing. “It’s a bad idea. That’s all.” 

“Uh-huh. I mean, going out on one date’s not exactly a commitment from either of you,” Puck says. “Finn going to be jealous? I mean, about _me_ , not her.” Quinn frowns, because she doesn’t know the answer to that question at all, but she must stay quiet too long as she thinks, because Puck snorts. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Look, I’ve been the one pushing it, but I wasn’t getting hit with a slushie with either of you this morning, was I? Because I was nowhere near you. So if Berry wants to have some fun, you can’t really say anything.” With that, Puck leaves the hallway, and Quinn glares after him ineffectually. 

She should have known that Puck was a wild card—he was before her accident, he was in her dream-life, and he still is. She hadn’t fully anticipated how hard it might be to keep him moving in the direction that she wants, and she scowls through most of the morning. Lunch doesn’t happen, because the smell coming from the cafeteria is too overwhelming. Quinn puts the thoughts of Puck, Rachel, and Finn out of her mind in order to get through Cheerios practice and an evening at home with her parents, and most of her is still upset about one of her dad’s comments when she gets to the school the next morning. She ignores the other students in the hallways, not paying any attention to anyone else until it’s time for glee club rehearsal. 

The glee club rehearsal where she sits with Santana and Brittany, because she’s still Head Cheerio for now, and where Finn sits nearby but not next to her, and everything’s normal enough until Puck walks in _with_ Rachel. Quinn can feel her teeth clenching as she tries not to react, and she quickly looks away from the two of them. She doesn’t look towards Santana or Brittany, though, instead glancing at Finn. Finn looks almost sulky, his eyes narrowed and his eyebrows drawn together, and Quinn thinks that he’s probably working himself up into a good snit, since he’s practically pouting, too. 

Mr. Schuester either recognizes the danger signs on Finn’s face too, or he has unintentionally impeccable timing, because he raises his voice and starts rehearsal as soon as Puck and Rachel are seated. He starts talking about the song ‘Bust a Move’ and how they need to come up with a song to mash-up with it. Quinn rolls her eyes, and she doesn’t blame Finn and Puck for both refusing to take the lead on the song. The end result is that Mr. Schuester performs for them, which does not improve Quinn’s mood, and she doubts it will improve Finn’s. 

When Mr. Schuester ends rehearsal, Quinn smiles appropriately at Brittany and Santana, smiles slightly more genuinely at Mercedes as she waves, and then wheels to glare at Rachel and Puck. Rachel lifts her chin, staring back, and Quinn rolls her eyes slightly before looking between Puck and Finn. 

“Come on, Quinn,” Finn says, putting his arm around her while giving Puck a pointed look. “We’ve got a class to go to.”

“Yeah, I see how it is,” Puck says, staring at the two of them. 

Finn scowls at Puck. “ _You’re_ the one who’s being… who’s being…” He trails off, scowling even harder, his eyebrows almost touching each other. “How you’re being!”

“I’m just—” 

“What are you talking about?” Rachel says, and as she looks between Finn and Puck, she seems to almost perk up. “Finn? Are you…” Rachel lowers her voice, pretending to whisper. “Jealous?” 

“I’m not!” Finn says, too quickly. His arm around Quinn squeezes her more tightly, tighter than she’d like. 

“Finn!” Quinn says in an actual whisper. “Too tight!” 

“Sorry,” Finn says. His hold on Quinn loosens, and he gives her a small, tight smile. “Better?” Quinn nods. 

“I think you are,” Rachel says, smiling a little too happily. “Well, Noah and I have to go to class, too.” She takes Puck’s arm and starts to steer him out the door, and Puck doesn’t stop her. Quinn scowls at the back of their heads. 

“We’ll have a talk with him after school,” Quinn says to Finn after the room is otherwise empty. “Do you have football practice today?” 

Finn nods his head. “Yeah. I mean, I think so.”

“After practice, then. Make sure he doesn’t leave?” 

Finn nods again. Quinn walks to class with Finn and spends the rest of the afternoon not paying attention to her classes, since she doesn’t actually need to pay attention, regardless. She pays more attention to Cheerios practice, both because it requires it and to make sure she’s aware of when Tanaka finishes with football practice. When she notices the team going to the locker room, she slips away from Cheerios practice—either Coach won’t notice or she’ll be off the team soon enough as it is. 

Finn must have actually kept Puck from leaving, because the two of them leave the locker room at the same time. “Follow me,” she says, gesturing for them to follow her. She wheels around and puts her hands on her hips. “What the hell are you doing, Puck?” 

Puck shrugs. “I already told you yesterday.” 

“Why were you with _Rachel_?” Finn demands. 

“Was there some reason I shouldn’t be? Last I checked, I was the one pushing this thing.” Puck gestures to the three of them, making almost a circle with his hand. “One date’s not a commitment. Oh, or did you mean because it’s Rachel, and you like her?” 

“That’s not what I said,” Finn says. His face turns red and he sounds increasingly flustered as he talks. “I just thought— I mean, Quinn wanted all of us to—” He stops and looks at Quinn for help. 

Quinn feels torn between screaming at Puck and trying to decipher exactly what it is Puck _does_ want so she can try to tell Finn. “I _think_ Puck is trying to assert that we haven’t given him a reason not to date anyone else.” 

“But I thought _we_ were all dating,” Finn says. 

Puck raises an eyebrow, looking directly at Finn. “Are we? You didn’t seem all that excited about the idea.”

“You didn’t have fun on our date?” Finn asks. “I thought we all had fun. Didn’t I look like I was having fun?”

“You’re the one that got all weird about Quinn and I kissing. And you and I kissing. And me watching you and Quinn kiss.” 

Finn huffs, crossing his arms. “Well, _yeah_ , ‘cause it was kinda weird. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it!”

“Without the kissing, it was just three people hanging out, I figure,” Puck says. 

“Oh for heaven’s sake!” Quinn says. “Are you parading around with Rachel because you decided Finn wasn’t enthusiastic enough?” 

“He wasn’t!” 

“I didn’t _not_ kiss you!” Finn counters. 

Puck frowns. “Yeah, but did you _want_ to?” 

“I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want to!”

“It didn’t feel like you wanted to!” 

Finn huffs again. “Well, I _did_ , okay?”

“Then I’d hate to know how you kiss when you don’t!” Puck says, still frowning at Finn, and Quinn feels like they might not notice if she left the room, not at the moment. 

“You wouldn’t know, because if I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t,” Finn says. “And, hey! Are you saying I’m a bad kisser?” He uncrosses his arms and shoves Puck with one hand, not very hard.

“I’m saying that you’d better work on your poetry or something to let people know you want to, ‘cause you startle a lot when you kiss,” Puck says, shoving Finn back with about the same amount of force, though he uses both hands. 

“ _Dude!_ ” Finn says, shoving Puck again, using both hands. Puck actually stumbles back a step. “I’m not a bad kisser!”

“I didn’t say you were a _bad_ kisser,” Puck says. He steps forward again and pushes Finn, his hands on Finn’s upper arms. Finn counters with another shove, his hands on Puck’s chest.

“You didn’t say I was a good one!”

“I shouldn’t have to talk you into it,” Puck says. “I mean, maybe you’re a better kisser when you’re the one who wants it. I guess I wouldn’t know that, would I?” Puck keeps his hands on Finn’s upper arms, trying to walk him backwards, and Quinn sighs, moving more to the side as she watches them. 

“It’s not my fault you’ve made out with more people than me,” Finn says. He’s obviously digging in his heels, trying to keep Puck from moving him. When Puck keeps pushing, Finn throws up an elbow, clocking Puck in the chin. 

“Ow!” Puck says, looking at Finn’s elbow like it offended him independently of the rest of Finn. “And I wouldn’t exactly have called it ‘making out’.” He shoves his side against Finn’s chest, releasing Finn’s arm on that side. 

“Hey! Jerk!” Finn jams his elbow into the side of Puck’s chest. 

“It’s true,” Puck says, his breath catching a little at the start of the sentence. “Don’t like the truth?” He shoves Finn again, still trying to push Finn backwards.

“Maybe you’re the bad kisser! Maybe if you were a better kisser, I’d be more whatever! Enthusiastic!” Finn shouts, then he swings his fist at Puck’s head. Puck ducks, so the punch connects with the side of his head instead of his face. 

“I’m the _best_ kisser. Maybe you learned to kiss from Suzy Pepper!” Puck yells, practically spitting on Finn at the same time. He swings at Finn, clearly off-balance, and ends up punching the side of Finn’s neck. 

Finn yells “Ow!” and then grabs Puck around the middle, tackling him to the ground. “I learned to kiss from _Quinn_ ,” he shouts at Puck, grabbing Puck by the mohawk and scrubbing his face into the ground. “She’s a good kisser. She’s a way better kisser than you.”

“Then I guess I should just go kiss Rachel!” Puck yells, his voice somewhat muffled. 

“No! Stop!” Quinn says. “You two are ridiculous!” 

“Maybe you should kiss this grass!” Finn says, shoving Puck’s face into the ground. “It’s probably a better kisser than me, too, huh?”

“You wouldn’t care if I did,” Puck says, pushing his elbow up into Finn. “I’m gonna make out with _everyone_ and you won’t care.” 

“Oh for crying out loud, why don’t you just kiss each other?” Quinn demands. 

“He doesn’t want me to,” Finn says. 

“No, _you_ don’t want _me_ to.” 

“I _do_!”

“Don’t!” 

“Do!”

“Don—”

Finn yanks Puck’s head back up from the ground with the hand still in his mohawk, rolling Puck to the side as he leans down and plants a hard kiss on Puck’s dirt-and-grass–covered mouth. Puck kisses back just as hard, pulling Finn’s hair while he does. They kiss for a couple of minutes, both of them lying on the ground, before Finn pulls away and spits out a few small pieces of grass.

“Do,” Finn says. 

“Was all of that really necessary, boys?” Quinn asks. 

“Yeah,” Puck says. “Probably.” 

“Yeah, I think so,” Finn agrees. 

“And this will be the end of your brief Rachel dalliance?” Quinn says to Puck. 

“Jealous?” Puck asks, almost smirking. 

“Maybe,” Quinn admits, and Puck looks at Finn. 

“What?” Finn says. “I already said I wasn’t jealous.”

“So you don’t care who I kiss?” Puck asks. “If you don’t care, what’s stopping me? I mean,  
besides Quinn.” 

“I didn’t say I didn’t care. I said I wasn’t jealous,” Finn says. 

Puck frowns. “Then maybe I’ll kiss whoever I want to.” 

“Maybe you don’t really even want to kiss anybody else,” Finn retorts. “Maybe you’re just saying that ‘cause you want me to be jealous.”

“Maybe you should be.” 

“Are you two going to hit each other again?” Quinn asks as she sighs. 

“Maybe,” Finn says. 

“Finn seems to need to get excited before he kisses,” Puck says. “And since he doesn’t get jealous, can’t get him worked up that way.” 

“Hey!” Finn protests. “I was just lying about not being jealous!”

“Why would you do that?” Puck asks. “That’s dumb.” 

Quinn puts her hand to her forehead, shaking her head. “For heaven’s sake,” she says quietly. “It’s a good thing you two are nice to look at.” 

“Yeah, we are, aren’t we?” Finn says. 

“And humble,” Quinn says. “Are we all clear on things for at least a day or two? I know Thursday’s going to be interesting.” 

“Aww, shit, I forgot about what Tanaka said at the end of practice,” Puck says, rolling onto his back. “Is he really gonna make us pick between football and glee club?” 

“Probably. He’s an asshole,” Finn says. He sighs and looks at Quinn expectantly. 

“Yes, he did, and yes, things worked out eventually,” Quinn says. “What do you think you should do?” 

“What do you want us to do?” Finn asks. 

Quinn sighs. Part of her wants to tell them to both pick glee club, letting everything else sort itself out, but she doesn’t know if it will, not without Finn initially staying on the football team. “You have to each make your own decision.” 

“What did the angel tell you we did?” Finn asks. 

“I think maybe I shouldn’t tell you, this time,” Quinn says. 

“Please?” 

“I bet we don’t do the same thing, and she doesn’t want us to fight about it again,” Puck says. 

“Oh,” Finn says, frowning so deeply it’s nearly a pout. “Okay. I kinda don’t want to stop football, but I really like glee club.”

“It will work out. Just not on Thursday,” Quinn promises. “Do what you think you need to do.” 

“Will you be mad if I pick football?” Finn asks. 

“Stop trying to get a hint!” Quinn says. 

“If Finn picks football, does that mean I pick glee club?” 

“You stop trying too!” 

“I don’t want to pick different things,” Finn says. “Why can’t we all just pick the same thing, so then everybody’s happy?”

“You’re trying to trick me! And the angel.” Quinn frowns. “It’ll be fine. And we’ll go out Saturday. Right?” 

“Sure,” Puck says. “Saturday night or all day again?” 

“We should do both,” Finn says firmly. 

“See, we’re all happy now,” Puck says. “And Finn was jealous.” 

“Is whether or not we were jealous the important part?” Quinn asks, and Puck shrugs. 

“Just a _little_ jealous,” Finn mutters under his breath.

Puck grins then. “Still counts.” 

“Go home and do your homework for once, boys,” Quinn says. “And both of you stay away from Rachel Berry. Okay?” 

“Okay, Quinn,” Finn says. 

Puck nods. “Yes, ma’am.” 

Quinn smiles. “I could get used to _that_ , too.”

Wednesday is mostly spent avoiding Puck and Finn’s questions. She sees the two of them conferring at least three times before Thursday afternoon, no doubt regarding what each of them will do. When Quinn goes to glee club after school, she stands waiting with the others, completely unsurprised when Matt and Mike walk in. She doesn't react except for a small smile when Puck walks in, though Rachel preens a little, as if it has anything to do with her. Puck ignores her and looks at the door behind him, then at Quinn.

Quinn doesn't react, but once everyone is talking quietly, she turns toward Puck. "Yes, that's what I expected."

"We didn't swap?"

Quinn shakes her head. "No, no swapping."

"He should have picked glee club. Tanaka needs all of us that are in here."

"Make sure Kurt joins again when Tanaka relents. Otherwise he'll go into this unfortunate Cheerios phase and drag Mercedes with him," Quinn instructs.

"He won't listen to me. Why would he?" Puck asks.

"He might, and anyway, I know he'll listen to hi—to Finn."

"His what?" Puck asks, narrowing his eyes.

"Nothing," Quinn says.

"Huh. Okay. I'll tell him. After I tell him it's pretty clear we stick with glee club and he should have figured that out." Puck shrugs and walks across the room to sit down, and Quinn frowns at his back. How did _Puck_ figure it out?

Quinn goes home without looking for Finn or checking to see where Puck goes, because she knows she needs to spend a little more time with her parents before they get suspicious. If she does things carefully, she can likely get more cash from them before she leaves completely. Her stash is bigger than she had hoped, and she knows what she needs to do for prenatal care to make it affordable, this time. 

Despite all her memories—or dreams—Quinn still knows she'll miss her parents when she moves out. She will miss them, but she can’t forgive them, and she doesn't understand why she forgave her mother in her coma. Her mother left her alone during most of her pregnancy, only leaving Quinn's father for her own reasons. Quinn enjoys dinner anyway, pretends to do her homework, and asks both of her parents for money. 

As she expected, she ends up with more cash than she asked for, and she adds to an envelope tucked inside her algebra book—no one, Quinn had realized, would look in a math book voluntarily. The next morning, Quinn realizes that she doesn’t remember if everything had been fixed before the game or if there wasn’t a game that week, and she realizes she’s still not sure if there’s a game that week. If there is, maybe the realization of missing four starters is part of what will make Tanaka come around. 

Puck is talking to Finn near Finn’s locker as Quinn heads to her first class, low and seemingly urgent, and Quinn decides not to interfere or eavesdrop. Neither of them look _angry_ , so she probably doesn’t need to micromanage them for a few hours. Probably. 

By third period, Quinn has determined that yes, there is a football game, and further, there’s a rumor that Tanaka is calling a practice at noon to try to figure out how to replace Matt, Mike, Puck, and Kurt on the lineup. Quinn hopes that whatever happened before happens again, and she also hopes that Puck remembered to tell Finn about Kurt.

Quinn is convinced by lunch that Puck might not have remembered, so she pulls out her phone and sends Finn a text, assuming that Finn will get it once he’s off the field and going back to class. 

_Did Puck tell you about making sure Kurt rejoins the football team too? It’s a minor detail but I still think he should._

_Because the you know who told you?_ Finn texts back near the end of the lunch period. 

Quinn shakes her head a little. _No one else is reading these texts. Yes. Did Tanaka give in yet?_

_Yeah everythings cool_

_Good. Tell Puck and then Kurt. Do we have a plan for tomorrow yet?_

_Puck wants to do haunted houses_ , Finn texts back. 

_Okay. I’ll let the two of you decide who’s driving_ Quinn sends, then quickly puts her phone away as she walks into her next class. She doesn’t see Finn or Puck the rest of the afternoon, but she does see Kurt near the end of the day, looking surprised but pleased. 

Quinn goes home before the game, letting her mother dictate what she eats for dinner, and none of the other Cheerios say anything to her when she drinks a protein shake and eats two packs of peanut butter crackers from the vending machine before the game starts. The entire football team is on the field, glee club members included, and Quinn feels triumphant. This is something she both did and did not change, but the end result does look at least somewhat different. 

She remembers being caught up in worries about being popular, the first time or the dream time that she lived this particular week, and of course she’s still concerned about her social standing. She doesn’t feel like there’s anything specific she could do to change things immediately, though, and consequently, her week is spent with her energy on different things. Quinn feels _successful_ , in a way she hadn’t fully anticipated, and she feels even more successful after the game ends. 

The three of them end up next to each other on the sidelines, and Quinn lets her Cheerios smile become a real one. Puck has an arm over Finn’s shoulder, and he looks like he’s about to throw his other one over Quinn’s shoulders when he stops suddenly. “Oh,” he says, looking at Quinn and then Finn. 

“What?” Finn asks. 

“There are actually a lot of people around right now,” Puck points out. 

“I’m going to have quite the reputation soon enough regardless,” Quinn says with a little shrug. “Finn?” 

Finn returns the shrug. “Nothing wrong with standing here,” he says. 

“I wasn’t going to just stand here was the thing,” Puck says, but he does put his other arm over Quinn’s shoulders. 

“Of course, we might want to keep it PG,” Quinn adds. 

“This is nice, though,” Finn says. 

“It is,” Quinn says, nodding and taking Finn’s hand in hers. “Apart from refereeing fistfights, I don’t know why more girls don’t try it.”

 

“I think she likes it when we roll around,” Puck says. 

Finn laughs and squeezes Quinn’s hand. “Probably she does.”

Quinn doesn’t confirm it, but she doesn’t deny it, either, and as they stand there, she realizes that she feels oddly happy and safe, at the same time. People are starting to leave the field, heading to their locker rooms, and before any of the Cheerios or Coach Sylvester can call to her, Quinn raises up on her toes and rapidly kisses Finn and then Puck. She smiles at them, dropping Finn’s hand and squirming out from under Puck’s arm to turn and join the rest of the squad before either of them can say anything. 

“Why does she get _two_ football players?” Quinn can hear one of the other girls whispering as they go into the Cheerios’ locker room, and Quinn turns towards her, expression flat and eyebrow raised. The girl blanches a little, which is satisfactory, and then says, “You are the head cheerleader?” 

Quinn nods, because that’s a good reason, actually, a good reason until she’s not a cheerleader at all. She turns away from the rest of the locker room for a moment, studying the clothes she has with her and trying to decide if she wants to chance changing. She doesn’t look pregnant per se, but she doesn’t look the same as she did before she got pregnant, either. 

Suddenly, someone grabs her by the shoulder and spins her around, where she ends up face to face with Santana. “Watch yourself!” Quinn snaps. 

“No, _you_ watch yourself,” Santana retorts, getting right in Quinn’s face as she talks. “You’d better back off of Puckerman.”

“Back off—oh, for goodness sake!” Quinn says as she rolls her eyes. In the midst of everything else, she’d more or less forgotten that Santana was still pretending to be interested in Puck, still completely in the closet. “You don’t really want Puck.” 

Obviously, this isn’t the response Santana expected, because she takes a step back, blinking her eyes rapidly. “What?”

“You heard me. You aren’t actually interested in him,” Quinn says, feigning boredom as much as she can. 

“How do—why would you say that?” Santana asks. 

“I know things. What did you think I was going to say?” 

“I didn’t,” Santana says quickly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just— just leave Puck alone!”

Quinn studies Santana for a moment, then shakes her head. “No.” 

Santana grabs Quinn by the shoulder again. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“Hands _off_ of me,” Quinn says, bringing her arm up and pushing out against Santana’s forearm. “I mean, _no_. I’ll do what I please. Puck’s free to do what he wants, too.” 

Santana looks even more confused now, her arm still outstretched, but no longer touching Quinn. “I could take you in a fight, you know,” she finally sputters. 

“Are you going to take that chance?” 

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Santana asks, dropping her arm back to her side with a loud huff. 

Quinn shrugs. “What do you mean?”

“The way you’re acting. The shit you’re saying.” Santana shakes her head. “There's something going on with you, Fabray, and I'm going to figure it out, even if you won't tell me.”

“Go ahead,” Quinn says, picking up her bag. She definitely isn’t changing in the locker room now. “I’ll even wish you luck.” Santana stares at Quinn in what Quinn can best describe as mildly disgusted confusion as Quinn leaves the locker room, and Quinn looks over her shoulder as she goes out the door in order to give Santana a last smile. If Santana can actually figure everything out without help, Quinn really would congratulate her. 

Quinn isn’t sure what time on Saturday they’re supposed to get together, and she eats an early lunch before considering if she should text them to ask. Before she can, though, she gets a text from Puck: _b there n 10_.

“Ten minutes?” Quinn says to her phone, shaking her head and picking up her purse before walking outside. When Finn’s truck arrives eight minutes after the text, she climbs inside with the two of them. “You couldn’t have given me a little more warning, boys?” 

“Haven’t been awake that long,” Puck says. “Guess what we’re doing!” 

“Aside from possibly a haunted house? I have no idea,” Quinn admits. 

“We’re going to see a Frank Lloyd White house!” Finn says. “Isn’t that cool?”

“Do you even know who he is?” Quinn asks. 

“Somebody famous with a cool-looking house,” Finn says. 

“Well, that’s… moderately accurate,” Quinn says. “So architecture and a haunted house?” 

Puck nods. “It’s the date equivalent of a mullet.”

“A _mullet_?” 

“Yeah, you know, business up front, party in the back. This is fancy smart-people stuff in the afternoon and a haunted house at night.” 

“And there’s no sushi,” Finn says. “See? We’re getting really good at this!”

“I appreciate that,” Quinn says. “What is for dinner?” 

“Mexican?” Puck says, sounding like he’s prepared for her to veto the idea. “It’s near the house tour.” 

“That’s fine,” Quinn says with a nod. 

“Cheese dip is good for the baby. Beans, too,” Finn says. 

“Have you been reading up?” Quinn asks. 

“Online. I found a list of all the foods that are good for the baby and bad for the baby,” Finn says, looking pleased with himself. “And it said you should eat a lot of protein, and the list had cheese _and_ beans on it!”

“And you’re supposed to reduce your stress and not carry a lot of really heavy stuff,” Puck adds. “So we tried to make a list of things that reduce stress.” 

“The first thing he put on the list is sex,” Finn says, then turns bright pink. 

“It does!” Puck says. 

“And the two of you were volunteering?” Quinn suppresses a smile and shakes her head a few times. “Did you come up with any other ideas?” 

“I said ‘massage’ too,” Puck says. 

“I don’t know what aromatherapy is, but one of the websites said you should use that,” Finn says, “only, some of them aren’t good for you. There’s some kind of sage you shouldn’t aromatherapy yourself with.”

“That’s good to know,” Quinn says. “Santana came up to me in the locker room after the game,” she adds casually. “She wanted to warn me off of you, Puck.” 

Puck snorts. “She dumped me weeks ago.” 

“Did she try to start a fight?” Finn asks. 

“Grabbed my shoulder. I made her stop,” Quinn says. “I pointed out that she wasn’t actually interested in Puck, which confused her.” 

“Huh?” Puck says. “What do you mean?” 

“Who does Santana spend most of her time with?” Quinn asks. 

“Brittany,” Finn answers quickly. 

“Exactly. Brittany.”

“She and Brittany are a thing? Will be a thing?” Puck asks. “That… okay, yeah, that kind of makes sense.” 

Finn’s eyebrows knit together, and his mouth twists up in thought. “So she’s…”

“Not interested in boys, and please, Finn, do _not_ sleep with her.” 

“Did he really?” Puck asks. “Seriously?” 

“I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t do that,” Finn says.

“Oh, you did, but you also did some other things that I’m pretty sure you won’t be doing this time,” Quinn says. The drive to Springfield is more or less calm and quiet, though Puck brings up sex for relaxation a second time before they arrive at the Westcott House. Quinn is a little bit surprised that Finn and Puck manage to pay attention to most of the guided tour and documentary, though by the time they tour the grounds, even Quinn is getting a little tired and ready to leave. 

“I was promised Mexican?” she says, carefully not smiling at the pair of relieved sighs they release. 

“Right away,” Puck says, and the Mexican restaurant is close by. 

After they’ve eaten, Quinn looks at Finn and Puck somewhat skeptically. “So it’s important to reduce stress, but we’re going to a haunted house?” 

“That’s not real stress,” Puck says. “It’ll be fun.” He grins at the two of them, and Quinn feels almost suspicious. 

“Do you have some kind of ulterior motive?” she asks Puck. 

“Haunted houses are fun,” Finn says. “That’s a motive.”

“Yeah, that’s one motive,” Puck says, looking entirely too innocent. 

“Finn? Did Puck mention any other motives to you?” Quinn asks. 

Finn shakes his head. “Nope. None.”

Puck grins even more widely than before and stands up, offering his hands to both of them. “See? Good clean fun.” 

It takes about fifteen minutes to get to the haunted house, which is both a haunted house and a haunted maze. Puck enthusiastically says they should go through the haunted house part so that they have plenty of time for the maze, which seems innocent enough, but Quinn is starting to wonder if he has some kind of insider knowledge of the contents of the maze. 

After the haunted house and all of them screaming at the top of their lungs—even Puck—Quinn demands a short break before they enter the maze. Puck looks disappointed but acknowledges maybe it’s needed, and the three of them stand close together near the maze entrance. When Quinn starts to shiver, Finn and Puck move closer, so they’re pressed against each other, and Quinn isn’t above the mental smugness she feels when she gets a few envious looks from other girls there. 

“Okay, maze time,” Puck says after ten or so minutes pass. He rubs his hands together and grins, looking at Finn out of the corner of his eye. “We have to stay together, so we should make sure we’re all touching at least one of the others at all times. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Quinn says. “That makes sense.” Puck takes her hand and starts walking towards the entrance, and Quinn grabs Finn with her other hand. She giggles a little to herself, and she wonders if they’ve picked things to do that aren’t in Lima solely because of a lack of things to do in Lima, or if in some way they understand that Quinn can let herself enjoy the time more, knowing the much-reduced chance of anyone from Lima seeing them. 

Quinn isn’t embarrassed, and that knowledge makes her want even more to avoid people they know. Santana’s reaction had surprised her, but Quinn realizes she surprised Satana, too. She probably should be at least a little bit sheepish or worried about what it means or what God would think, but she isn’t, and she doesn’t want to be thrust into that feeling unexpectedly. 

Puck leads them into the maze for about ten minutes, all of them jumping and screaming several times, and then they end up in a short empty portion of the maze. Instead of turning around to go back to the main path, though, Puck stops and stands in place. 

“This is a good spot,” he says. 

“A good spot for what?” Finn asks. 

“Making out,” Puck says with a grin. 

“Did you pick this place solely to find a dark corner of the maze?” Quinn asks.

“Not… really?” 

“Probably,” Finn says. “So, uh. Who’s going first?”

Puck shrugs. “You are.”

“Just me?”

“No, Finn, not by yourself,” Quinn says, shaking her head. 

“I want to see how he’d do that!” 

“Who am I making out with first?” Finn asks. 

“You decide,” Puck says. “Like those choose-your-own-adventure books.” 

“Oh.” Finn doesn’t move for almost a minute, looking between Puck and Quinn, then he steps closer to Quinn. He leans in to plant a quick peck on her lips, saying, “I’ll be right back,” then he turns to Puck and kisses him, a lot harder than just a peck. Quinn watches as Puck kisses back, the shoulder of Finn’s shirt balled up in his hand, and she thinks that in some ways, their kissing isn’t that different than when they were fighting—though that may say more about their fighting than their kissing. 

Several minutes pass before Puck lets go of Finn, who promptly turns back to Quinn looking flushed and giddy. Finn pulls Quinn to him more gently than Puck had grabbed him, but the kiss he gives her this time is just as hard and enthusiastic as the one he shared with Puck. Quinn goes up on her toes, her hands on Finn’s shoulders, and she briefly remembers what Finn said before, about Puck watching them, but it feels much less weird already. 

When Finn finally pulls away, he still looks flushed and giddy. He grins at Quinn, then turns his head to grin at Puck before gently pushing Quinn in Puck’s direction. “Your turns now.”

“He’s a quick learner, right?” Puck says, taking Quinn’s hand as he pulls her closer, and Quinn nods before Puck’s lips land on hers. He kisses her just as hard as Finn did, but a little slower, and Quinn doesn’t have to go up quite as high on her toes. By the time Puck releases her, she feels a little breathless, and she laughs. 

“Puck has it figured out,” she says to Finn. “He took a rest break in the middle.” 

“Are you tired? Do you need to sit down?” Finn asks. 

“I’m fine. Are we allowed to finish the maze now, Puck?” 

“Sure, but I’m not promising anything if we find a dead-end again.” 

They get through the maze without ending up in a dead-end, probably because they make a good team for finding their way through. The three of them are all hungry again afterward, and one of the workers gives them decent directions to a place called the Corner Cone, where Quinn orders a strawberry shortcake, Puck gets a banana split with three different flavors of ice cream and a California dog, and Finn orders a Coney Island Dog and a triple scoop of tutti-frutti. 

“Tutti-frutti? Really?” Puck says. 

“What’s wrong with tutti-frutti?” Finn asks. 

“Are you going to use it as inspiration for your next solo in glee club?” Puck says, snickering a little. 

Finn frowns. “I’m just gonna eat it.”

“Don’t you think he should, Quinn?” 

“I’m standing clear of this one,” Quinn says as the worker hands them their tray. 

“I don’t see what’s wrong with tutti-frutti,” Finn says, slouching down with his ice cream cone. “Tutti-frutti’s a perfectly good flavor.”

“Sure,” Puck says. “Sure it is.” He picks up his California dog and takes a bite, and Quinn shakes her head at both of them as she starts on her ice cream. 

Haunted houses and mazes are apparently good for making Finn and Puck particularly famished, since they eat rapidly and messily. Quinn pulls several napkins out of the dispenser and hands some to each of them. 

“You’re a mess, Finn Hudson,” she says, gesturing to his face. 

“I was gonna clean up when I was done!” Finn insists. 

“You can clean up now,” Quinn says. She licks her spoon clean before setting it back in the empty dish. “We need to discuss something else that’s going to change.”

“Does Finn still get a brother?” Puck asks. 

“That would be kind of cool,” Finn says. 

“Yes, Finn still gets a brother. I’m talking about the baby. At the time, the person who adopted her seemed like a good idea, but it needs to be someone else now,” Quinn says. 

“How’d you know? Did you get to see her?” Puck says. 

“Does she look like you?” Finn asks. 

“Sort of, yes, and… well, sort of about seeing her, too,” Quinn admits. “I mean, at first, Mrs. Schuester wanted to adopt her. I guess she still does, right now, because she’s still telling Mr. Schuester she’s pregnant.” 

“And she’s not?” Puck asks. Quinn shakes her head, and Puck whistles. 

“Wow,” Finn says. “That’s just mean.”

“I mean, Mr. Schuester would be a good dad,” Quinn says. “Don’t you think? Just not with Mrs. Schuester?” 

“But can he raise a baby all by himself?” Finn asks. 

“Maybe he could raise a baby with someone else,” Quinn says. 

“And you have someone in mind?” Puck guesses. 

Quinn nods. “Ms. Pillsbury.” 

“But how do we get Mr. Schuester and Ms. Pillsbury together?” Finn asks. “He’s married to Mrs. Schuester.”

“He won’t be for that long. He’ll find out about Mrs. Schuester lying to him, remember?” 

“So… you want us to make sure Mr. Schuester gets a divorce and gets together with Ms. Pillsbury, so the two of them can adopt the baby?” Puck asks. “What do you think, Finn?” 

“I don’t know. Is that the right thing to do? Is that what the angel said should happen?” Finn asks. 

“I don’t know what _should_ happen, I just know what shouldn’t happen,” Quinn says. “And Shelby was not a good choice!” 

Finn squints his eyes in confusion. “Who’s Shelby?” 

“Oh.” Quinn sighs. “Shelby Corcoran. She’s the director of Vocal Adrenaline, and Rachel doesn’t know this yet, but she’s Rachel’s biological mother.” 

“Wow,” Puck says, looking stunned. Finn looks equally shocked, shaking his head slowly.

“That weird. You were gonna give Rachel’s mom the baby?” Finn says. “But the angel says not to now.”

“It was… things were moving very fast, and then we didn’t see her for over a year, and then we did, and I think all of that was a bad plan,” Quinn says. 

“Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense,” Puck says, then makes a horrified face. “You said I slept with her!” 

“Ew! _Puck_!” Finn says, smacking Puck’s arm. “You slept with Rachel’s _mom_?”

“It wasn’t _me_! It was fake-me! Bad-me that we’re supposed to change!” Puck says. 

“It’s only very slightly a mitigating factor, but I do think you were concerned about continuing access to B—to the baby,” Quinn says, making a face at herself. 

“I had to sleep with Rachel’s mom to see the baby? That’s gross, too,” Puck says, shaking his head. 

“That’s seriously messed up, dude,” Finn says. 

“Wait, where were you? Usually you tell me not to do the really stupid stuff!” Puck says. “Was Finn in a coma or something?” 

“No, he was not in a coma,” Quinn says. “What Finn was doing isn’t important. That’s already changed. I’m sure of _that_.” 

“Maybe I was out of town,” Finn says. 

“While I’m thinking about it, high school engagements and weddings are very last century,” Quinn says. “None of that.” 

“ _That_ wouldn’t be me,” Puck says. “Dude, what did you do?” 

“Did I try to get you to marry me?” Finn asks Quinn. 

“No. Still,” Quinn says. “We’re getting off-track. Mr. Schuester? Ms. Pillsbury?” 

“And we’d get to see her sometimes?” Puck asks, then shrugs. “What if she pees on Ms. Pillsbury?” 

“Yeah, Ms. Pillsbury wouldn’t handle that very well,” Finn says. 

“I’m sure Mr. Schuester can change diapers. We’ll have to make sure Mr. Schuester and Ms. Pillsbury get together in time, though,” Quinn says. 

“Do we have to, like, send Ms. Pillsbury gifts and pretend they’re from Mr. Schue?” Puck asks. 

“We can write love letters to her!” Finn says. “And we’ll sign them ‘your secret admirer’.”

“Oh no,” Quinn says. “No. First we have to get Mr. Schuester to leave Mrs. Schuester, anyway.”

 

“‘Cause she’s a liar.” Puck nods. “Are we going to tell Mr. Schuester that she’s lying? He might wonder how we know.” 

“I don’t want to ruin her life or anything, but it’s kind of awful that she’s lying to Mr. Schuester about being pregnant. I think maybe we need to make sure he knows,” Finn says. 

“We’ll find a good way for him to find out in the next couple of weeks, then,” Quinn decides. “And he can take a month or two to be single.” 

“Wait, wasn’t our glee club assignment something about Ms. Pillsbury marrying Tanaka?” Puck asks. “She can’t marry two people. Or raise a baby with Mr. Schuester while she’s married to Coach.”

“Uh. You’re on a date with two people right now,” Finn points out.

“Yeah, but Mr. Schue and Coach aren’t going to make out,” Puck argues. “And if they can’t even make out, they really can’t manage anything else.” 

“She won’t marry Tanaka,” Quinn says, even though she’s not sure Finn and Puck are listening now. 

“Yeah, but do you think _she_ could make out with Mr. Schue?” Finn ask. “I mean, lips have germs and stuff. Have you ever seen her kiss anybody?”

“Why would I have seen her kiss anybody?” Puck says. “I bet she would, ‘cause she likes Mr. Schue.” 

“Still, it’s kind of weird to try and make your teachers hook up,” Finn says. 

“It’s not like we’re going to _watch_. All we have to know is that they’ve got a car seat and a baby bed and shit,” Puck says. “Right?” 

“I guess so,” Finn says. 

“Yes, I’d rather not think about Ms. Pillsbury and making out,” Quinn says. “Or Tanaka and Mr. Schuester making out. Any other concerns, boys?” 

“Yeah.” Puck looks at her for a moment. “When are you going to, you know.” He looks at Finn like he wants a little help. “Need new clothes?” 

“Oh, wow, right. You’re gonna get, you know.” Finn holds his hands out in front of him, like he’s mimicking the shape of a large, round stomach. “Big.”

“Yes, I know.” Quinn sighs. “Not yet. Soon.”

“That’s kind of cool,” Puck says. “Like _Alien_ but less gross and stuff.”

Quinn can feel herself, inexplicably, start to cry. “I'm going to get fat and you'll both think I'm hideous!” 

“No way! You’ll still be pretty!” Finn says. 

“I’ll be fat and swollen and you’ll be embarrassed to be seen with me!”

“No, we’ll, uh, help you not be swollen!” Puck says. “RICE. We know how to do that!” 

“And you can drink lots of water and stay out of the sun,” Finn says. 

Quinn shakes her head, putting one hand on her face. “Oh, you precious idiots.”

“What?” Finn asks. “We’re helping and reassuring, just like the website said!”

“You’re very helpful,” Quinn says faintly. “I’ll be sure to work on staying out of the sun.” 

Finn smiles, nodding to himself a little, but then his face gets serious. “You know we love you, right? Even if you’re fat and need special clothes, we’ll still love you.”

“Yeah,” Puck says as he nods, too. “Or swollen!” 

“I stand by my earlier statement,” Quinn says after a moment. “Precious idiots.” 

 

Monday reminds her a lot of the previous Monday, except instead of receiving a slushie, she’s participating in the glee club’s slushying of Mr. Schuester. Quinn tries on Monday night to remember what happened in her memories following that, but all she can recall is being worried about doctor bills that she doesn’t have this time. That does jar her memory that there’s going to be a bake sale, and she decides to ask Puck upfront to make cupcakes. Maybe the three of them can all make cupcakes together the night beforehand. 

On Tuesday, Quinn is reminded of the other thing that occupied the glee club that week in her memories: Rachel and Kurt’s ‘diva-off’ over ‘Defying Gravity’. She remembers Kurt missing the high note, which meant they’d all had to reluctantly vote for Rachel, and during Cheerios practice on Tuesday afternoon, she tells Santana and Brittany to vote for Kurt no matter what. After practice, she goes over and stands outside the football team’s locker room, first telling Matt and Mike to vote for Kurt regardless, then giving Kurt what she hopes is an encouraging smile and pep talk. When Finn and Puck finally come out, she tells them the same thing about voting for Kurt, and it says something, Quinn thinks, that they don’t even particularly look surprised when she tells them things now. 

She thinks about that on the drive home, and after she organizes her homework for the week and reminds herself which upcoming tests will require any thought, she goes downstairs. 

“Mom?” 

“Yes, Quinnie?” 

“The glee club is having a bake sale on Thursday. Can I have a few glee club members over tomorrow night to bake some cupcakes?” 

Quinn watches her mom frown, then suddenly brighten. “That’s right, your father will be gone tomorrow night already! I think that’s a lovely idea, Quinnie. Who will it be?” 

“Finn, of course.” Quinn pauses. “Probably Puck as well, and I’ll invite Santana and Brittany.” She has no intention of inviting Santana or Brittany, but her mother would not understand only inviting Finn and Puck. 

“That sounds good,” her mom says, and before Quinn can even ask, her mom pulls out several bills. “For whatever supplies you need.” Quinn won’t need to spend more than ten dollars on some cake mix, but she doesn’t mention that to her mom. When she gets back to her room, she puts the excess cash in her envelope, then pulls out her phone. 

_We’re making cupcakes at my house tomorrow night. My dad won’t be here. No arguing!_

Neither of them argue, simply sending back short confirmation texts, and Quinn smiles to herself. As it should be. Since there’s no baking at school the next day, in midst of all of the glee club traveling via wheelchair, Finn and Puck don’t end up rolling around in the hallway like imbeciles, which is probably better for all of them, not just the two of them. 

After Finn and Puck arrive at her house that evening, they spend fifteen minutes arguing about what kind of cupcakes they’re going to make, each of them advocating for a different kind or combination of kinds. Finally Quinn decrees that if they go ahead and get started, they can make _all_ of the kinds suggested, and the first twenty or so minutes goes smoothly. Then Quinn remembers the food fight she and Puck had, and this time, she picks up two handfuls of flour, tossing one on each of them. They both look scandalized for a few seconds before retaliating, and their cooking quickly devolves into a full-out threeway food fight, one that ends up lasting much longer than the one in her memories. 

It only stops when the oven beeps, alerting them that the first of many batches of cupcakes is done baking, and they’re more than halfway done before they get most of the kitchen cleaned. At the end of the evening, Quinn sends them home just before her dad arrives, Puck still with egg smeared in his mohawk and Finn looking like a reverse raccoon somehow. Quinn gives the kitchen a final wipe before heading upstairs, and she climbs into her shower as she hears the garage door announce that her dad is home. 

She stands under the spray for a long time, thinking about the evening, and it dawns on her that some of the most important things she’s changing aren’t the things she would have thought to write down at all. Instead, they’re seemingly smaller things, but they serve her larger goals well. Everyone is happier than they were in the past, and it doesn’t feel like temporary happiness. It feels more like something beginning and things altering, and Quinn reminds herself that being happy isn’t something that will make Yale less likely to accept her. 

By the time the ‘diva-off’ is set to happen after school on Thursday, the glee club’s first and only bake sale is over. Their sales are far better than the initial bake sale in her memories, enough so that they don’t have to hold a second bake sale. It isn’t nearly as successful as the second one was, but Quinn isn’t entirely certain why the second one did so well, and it’s possible that she’s already changed that trajectory, too. 

Even though Quinn has tried to ensure Kurt’s victory, she still finds Finn before last period and pulls him to the side of the hallway. “I need you to find Kurt and tell him something,” Quinn says as quietly as she can. 

Finn looks warily at Quinn from the corners of his eyes. “Okay. What?”

“I need you to find Kurt before rehearsal and make sure he’s going to hit the note no matter what.” Quinn can’t be certain that everyone will really vote for Kurt if he fails to hit the note again, and a petty part of her wants Rachel to lose the vote in a way that she can’t blame entirely on popularity. 

“What note?” Finn asks. “And why do _I_ have to tell him that?”

“In the song he and Rachel are singing, from _Wicked_ ,” Quinn says. “Because he’ll listen to you!” 

“Oh. Is this because you don’t like Rachel, or is it another angel thing?” 

“It’s because I think things in glee club should be more fair. For everyone. Wouldn’t it be nice if Mercedes got more solos?” Quinn says. “If Rachel wins, she’s going to think she gets all the solos from now on. You know that.” 

Finn nods. “Yeah. And it would be nice if everybody got a chance to have solos, I guess.”

“So you’ll talk to Kurt?” 

“Yeah. I don’t know if I can make him hit a note or anything, but I’ll tell him we want him to try really hard,” Finn says. 

Quinn smiles and kisses Finn’s cheek. “Thank you!” she says before heading down the hall to her own class. When she gets to rehearsal, Kurt looks nervous but resolved, and Quinn feels a little bit nervous, too. Rachel insists on going first, and Kurt doesn’t object, so Rachel performs exactly as Quinn remembers. 

Then Kurt stands up, and Quinn crosses her fingers. Maybe he can’t actually hit the note, but he had seemed so certain. Maybe he’d had a cold or sore throat in her memories, and maybe he doesn’t this time. Whatever it is, Quinn gasps a little when Kurt _does_ hit the note. She looks over at Rachel a few seconds later, curious. Rachel looks utterly stunned, staring at Kurt with her mouth partway open, and that is almost as satisfying as the results when Mr. Schuester announces Kurt’s well-deserved win ten minutes later. Quinn thinks back to her revelation in the shower the night before: the smaller things seem to make a disproportionately large difference. 

 

Despite their plan to hasten things along with regard to the Schuesters’ impending divorce, Quinn doesn’t spend that much time thinking about Terri Schuester specifically, and she definitely isn’t thinking about her at school until she sees her at the end of a hallway. Quinn keeps heading towards her, suspecting that the person Mrs. Schuester is scanning the hallway for is probably Quinn herself. It’s time to start things moving, regardless of what Mrs. Schuester has to say, and Quinn straightens her shoulders as she approaches her. 

“Mrs. Schuester?” 

“Quinn,” Mrs. Schuester says, stepping uncomfortably close to Quinn so she can whisper. “How are you feeling? How is your…” She pauses to look around before continuing in an even softer whisper, “Situation.”

Quinn keeps her Cheerios smile fixed on her face. “Oh, I think _my_ situation is quite good, compared to yours.” 

“Oh?” Mrs. Schuester bats her eyelashes, or maybe she’s just blinking rapidly. “I’m not the pregnant high schooler who’s also the president of McKinley’s celibacy club, now am I?”

“No, you’re the woman who’s lying to her husband about being pregnant in a futile attempt to save your relationship,” Quinn says too sweetly. “And you’re going to tell him about it this weekend.” 

“How could you say that? I’ve been trying to _help_ you, Quinn!” Mrs. Schuester say. 

“No, you’ve been trying to figure out a way around your lies.” Quinn smiles more widely. “So you’re going to tell Mr. Schuester this weekend, or I’m going to need a meeting with my favorite teacher Tuesday morning.” 

Mrs. Schuester blinks rapidly again, looking shocked—fake-shocked, maybe—and leans in even closer. “I’m not going to be threatened by a pregnant sixteen-year-old cheerleader.”

“Oh, I’m not threatening you!” Quinn laughs. “I’m just so worn out from all the secret-keeping, Mrs. Schuester. My parents don’t know, and Ms. Pillsbury tries hard, but Mr. Schuester’s just so much more understanding. Don’t you agree?” 

“You’d better think very carefully about who you’re messing with,” Mrs. Schuester says, her tone sharp.

“An unemployed liar?” Quinn scoffs. 

“You think you’re so special,” Mrs. Schuester hisses at Quinn. “But guess what? I _was_ you. If you were as smart as you like to think, you’d take my advice instead of threatening my marriage.”

Quinn takes a step backward and looks Mrs. Schuester up and down, trying to approximate the way Puck sometimes appraises people. “No,” Quinn says finally. “You were never me.” 

Mrs. Schuester huffs and does a little foot-stomp reminiscent of Rachel Berry. “I tried to _help_ you. You’re making a huge mistake.” She turns and stomps off towards the doors to the parking lot. 

“And I only have to get through going to the bank on Monday,” Quinn says softly to herself. “Halloween is tomorrow. There’s nothing you can do to me, Mrs. Schuester.” 

Halloween means going to the giant party some of the seniors on the football team are throwing. Quinn dresses as a short-skirted angel, mostly because she has the costume and it doesn’t expose her mid-section, but partially because a small part of her thinks it’s funny. Most of the party is spent avoiding people’s questions about why she arrived with both Finn and Puck, and much of the rest is spent avoiding people’s attempts to hand her various alcoholic drinks, though at least Finn and Puck help to intercept those. 

Quinn spends Sunday on pins and needles. No matter what else happens, she needs to get the rest of her money the next day and get the remainder of her things out of the house by the end of the week, she decides. It’s the same week that she remembers Finn coming to dinner, and it takes everything she has not to throw up when her mother stops her after lunch on Sunday. 

“Quinnie, why don’t you invite Finn over for dinner this week? I know there’s a game on Friday, but maybe Thursday or Saturday?” 

Quinn forces herself to smile and nod. “Sure, Mom. I’ll let you know which one.” She goes to her room as quickly as she can with the excuse of homework, then stares at her calendar. Thursday or Saturday is now her deadline, the day she has to be ready to leave for good, and now she knows it matters less if her parents notice anything is missing. She fills another two boxes that night, carrying them downstairs after her parents are asleep, and nestled in one of them in her trunk is her envelope of cash. 

On Monday morning, Quinn avoids her parents, and she snaps at everyone during her first two classes. The small part of her brain that isn’t angry and nervous tells her it’d be best to stay away from people she cares about at all, which means she dodges Finn, Puck, and Mercedes until the final bell rings. Then she skips Cheerios practice and heads straight for the bank, emptying her account. She leaves Chase and drives down the road to Woodforest, opening a savings account in her own name and depositing most of the cash in it. She keeps out ten dollars and treats herself to soup and a salad at Panera before driving home. 

Since she doesn’t have to spend long on her homework, she packs a few more things and scavenges for a few more boxes before doing her laundry, then sets her alarm early. Mr. Schuester had seemed completely normal, and Quinn hadn’t expected Mrs. Schuester to confess, anyway. 

Quinn leaves the house on Tuesday morning before her dad is downstairs, and she goes through the McDonald’s drive-through before heading to McKinley and walking through the mostly-empty hallways to Mr. Schuester’s office. He’s already there, studying something on his computer, and Quinn knocks on the doorframe. 

“Mr. Schuester?” 

Mr. Schuester looks up, giving Quinn a small smile. “Hello, Quinn. What can I do for you?”

Quinn enters the office and closes the door behind her. “I need to talk to you.” 

“Sure. Have a seat.”

“Thanks.” Quinn smiles and sits on the edge of the chair. “I don’t really know where to start. I’m planning to give the baby up for adoption. And I had someone approach me, interested in adopting her.” 

“Well, Quinn that’s… shouldn’t you talk to Ms. Pillsbury about this?” Mr. Schuester says. “I’m glad you’ve got a plan, but I’m really not qualified to help you make a decision about adoptive parents.”

Quinn shakes her head. “No. I’m not going to let that person adopt her. But the reason I’m telling you is that the woman who approached me was…” Quinn takes a deep breath. “Mrs. Schuester.” 

Mr. Schuester’s face goes blank, and he blinks slowly a few times before responding. “Quinn, why would my wife talk to you about us adopting your baby. She’s pregnant. Two newborn babies, that would be a lot of work.” He gives Quinn the small smile again. “Maybe it’s because of her sister. She has triplets.”

“Because she’s not pregnant, Mr. Schuester.” Quinn presses her lips together. “I should have told you before now. I’m sorry.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Mr. Schuester says. “Of course she’s pregnant. I’ve seen the ultrasound. I was there when the doctor did it.”

“I don’t know about an ultrasound,” Quinn admits, frowning a little. “But I know she’s not pregnant, and I told her I didn’t want her asking me about my baby anymore, and that if she didn’t tell you, I was going to.” 

“But that’s crazy. Why would she fake a pregnancy? _How_ would she?” Mr. Schuester asks. 

“I don’t know.” Quinn bites her lip. “I’m sorry. You should talk to her. I should have told you before.”

“No. I’m sorry. You’re obviously very confused,” Mr. Schuester says. “I really think you need to go speak with Ms. Pillsbury, and find a way to have a discussion with your parents about what’s going on.”

Quinn can feel her face harden. “Talk to your wife, Mr. Schuester, and remember you have no right to talk to my parents!” 

“No, of course not. I just think you need to make sure you have a plan in place,” Mr. Schuester says. 

“While we’re discussing things we think each other should do,” Quinn says as she stands, “read the show choir rules!” Maybe she can prevent Mr. Schuester’s unfortunate sleeping on a bare mattress, while she’s changing other things. She shakes her head. “I’m not confused, Mr. Schuester, but I am sorry.” 

Mr. Schuester sighs. “Well, thank you for your concern, Quinn. You be sure to let me know if there’s anything you need.”

Quinn shakes her head again as she leaves Mr. Schuester’s office. The hallways are still relatively empty, and Quinn whispers to herself as she walks towards Ms. Pillsbury’s office. “I need you to believe me, Mr. Schue!” she says, shaking her head. 

Ms. Pillsbury is carefully dusting the leaves of one of her plants when Quinn reaches the office, and Quinn doesn’t wait for Ms. Pillsbury’s cheerful invitation before closing the door and sitting down. 

“Ms. Pillsbury,” Quinn says slowly. “Mr. Schuester is probably going to ask you if I’m confused or upset. Because I told him that Mrs. Schuester wanted to adopt my baby, because she’s not really pregnant.” 

Ms. Pillsbury gasps and drops her feather duster. “Quinn! Are you—are you sure?” 

Quinn nods as Ms. Pillsbury sits down behind her desk. “I should have said something to him when she first approached me. Or to you. Everything was—” Quinn shakes her head. “It was confusing and complicated, and I didn’t want to deal with it yet. And now I tried to tell him, but he doesn’t believe me. I suppose I understand not wanting to believe me.” 

“Oh, goodness,” Ms. Pillsbury says. “Oh, Quinn. Well. Thank you for telling me. How are _you_ feeling?” 

“Better than I expected to be,” Quinn says truthfully, and Ms. Pillsbury smiles at that. Quinn stands and returns the smile. “Thank you for listening.” 

“Of course, Quinn,” Ms. Pillsbury says. “And thank you for telling me.” 

Quinn squares her shoulders as she goes through the rest of the day, knowing Mr. Schuester is probably either observing her or asking other teachers about her. She doesn’t know what will happen the rest of the week, but she remembers Kurt flirting even more with Finn, along with the disastrous dinner at her house, and Quinn decides it’s probably time to tell the rest of the glee club about her pregnancy, since it’s been much more of a secret this time. 

She waits until the end of their rehearsal to stand up and turn to face the rest of the club. She smiles a little and looks at Finn and Puck, who look confused but encouraging. Then she looks at Mercedes, who looks more concerned than the boys. “I have an announcement,” Quinn begins. 

The rest of the club looks at her with a mix of confusion, concern, and—on Rachel’s face, at least—mild annoyance. Quinn wonders for a moment if she’s changed things enough to make Rachel and Santana closer friends, oddly united because of her. 

“A few of you know already, but… I’m pregnant,” Quinn says. There are a few gasps and definitely some surprised looks, but Quinn focuses on Rachel and Santana. Rachel looks oddly triumphant, like Quinn’s revealed a losing hand at cards, while Santana just glares at Quinn. 

“Have you told your parents yet?” Tina asks, her eyes wide. 

Quinn shakes her head. “No. Not yet. They’ll probably kick me out.” 

“You know you can stay with me if that happens,” Mercedes says. “My mom and dad wouldn’t mind.”

Quinn smiles gratefully at Mercedes. “Thank you.” 

“You don’t really think you can keep hiding this from your parents,” Santana says. 

“Yes, Santana, I think they’re going to go blind.” Quinn rolls her eyes. “I’m aware that they will find out sooner rather than later. Possibly very soon.” 

“And you _really_ won’t be able to hide it from Coach Sylvester,” Santana adds. 

“Amazingly, I’ve been aware of this for weeks now, but I appreciate your concern,” Quinn says sweetly. 

Rachel raises her hand. Quinn looks at her oddly and raises an eyebrow. Rachel lowers her hand.

“Pregnancy and an infant seem like likely distractions from the glee club’s goal of winning Sectionals and then Regionals,” Rachel says primly. “I’m concerned that the club will suffer if our lead male vocalist has too many outside worries.”

Quinn widens her eyes theatrically. “Are you trying to suggest there should be auditions for all leads, Rachel? Because I’m sure you’re aware that telling another woman what she should or should not do with her body is inappropriate.” 

Rachel manages to almost looking convincingly offended. “Of course not. I’m just concerned about the impact this will have on Finn’s music career.”

“Oh?” Quinn looks at Finn and Puck. “Boys? Do you feel distracted by outside worries?” 

Finn shrugs. Puck shakes his head. Rachel’s offended-look turns into a scowl. “What does Puck have to do with this?” Rachel demands. “If you’ve got Finn, why do you need to have Puck, too? Puck, you do realize she’s pregnant with Finn’s baby!”

Puck turns to look at Rachel and almost grins for a few seconds before seeming to catch himself. “Oh, we’re all aware of everything. Right, Finn?” 

Finn nods. “Right.”

“See?” Quinn says to Rachel. “We’re fine.” 

“I hardly see how you can call this fine!” Rachel says. “What about Regionals? What about Nationals?”

“Rachel, even when I’m nine months pregnant, I’ll be a better dancer than you,” Quinn says, still smiling sweetly. “I didn’t tell the club so you could offer a critique of my personal choices. I told the club because most of you are my friends.” 

Rachel doesn’t have a response to that, so she sits with her hands in her lap, her face pursed up like she’s smelled something bad. Mercedes smiles encouragingly, though.

“We are your friends,” Mercedes says. “Nobody else here’s going to say anything else to you about this.” She looks around the room, narrowing her eyes as she points at Rachel. “Or say anything to anybody else, you got it?”

“Fine,” Rachel snaps. 

“Thank you,” Quinn says quietly to Mercedes, sitting back down. Everyone starts to leave the rehearsal then, either silently or talking quietly, and Quinn exhales. When everyone but Finn and Puck has left, she turns to Finn. “My mother thinks you’re coming to dinner on Saturday night. That’s when they found out, before.” 

“But if I don’t sing anything, then they won’t, right?” Finn asks. 

“Never sing ‘Having My Baby’,” Puck says to Finn. 

“They’re going to find out eventually, even if you don’t. I’d rather be prepared,” Quinn says. 

“So what should I do at dinner?” Finn asks. 

“Follow my lead, and help me carry the rest of my stuff out, once I tell them,” Quinn says resignedly. “Next week, we’ll deal with the other parents.” 

 

For the rest of the week, Quinn tries to stay out of Mr. Schuester’s line of sight. She also tries to make sure she doesn’t hear anyone talking about her, but Mercedes’s instructions are apparently working, and no one outside the glee club seems to have any idea that Quinn is pregnant. Occasionally she thinks that some of them seem to almost pity her, and while it offends Quinn, she also can understand why they would, especially at this point in her pregnancy and her life. Too many times, a high school pregnancy in Lima means the end of any dreams the girl had, and usually the boy’s too. Quinn won’t let that happen to her, to any of them. 

She spends some time observing Ms. Pillsbury, for two reasons. Ms. Pillsbury usually knows where Mr. Schuester is, which helps Quinn avoid him. Also, though, Quinn wants to make sure her selection is correct. Ms. Pillsbury has issues with keeping things clean, yes, but she seems to genuinely care for people. Quinn’s observations confirm for her that Ms. Pillsbury is, above all else, kind. 

Quinn doesn’t regret who she is, but she doesn’t want Beth to grow up in a world like she did. She doesn’t want Beth to feel like she has to be a certain type of person, and only that type of person, to be loved. Quinn plays the part with practiced ease, and she suspects a part of her always will. It isn’t what she wants for Beth, though, and she suspects Finn and Puck would both say the same. Quinn can’t be certain what kind of mother Ms. Pillsbury will be, but starting with kindness doesn’t seem so horrible to Quinn. 

On Wednesday evening, Quinn realizes she has a final chance to get a little more cash, and she approaches her mom, asking for money to go to the mall the next day and get something new to wear for Saturday night’s dinner. Her mom thinks it’s an excellent idea, and Quinn manages to get double the amount she would have actually spent when she mentions shoes and accessories. 

An hour later, Quinn goes to ask her dad for money to get Finn a new tie for dinner. Her dad doesn’t have any ‘change’, and Quinn folds the one hundred dollar bill carefully when she gets back to her room, sliding all of the cash into her chemistry textbook. She has only three more nights in her room and in her house, and suddenly it hits her. 

She’s done all of the planning that she can do. She’s packed almost everything out of her room, barring the few things on the walls waiting for the very last box, and everything out of her closet, too, except for the dirty clothes in one half of her suitcase and a few clean ones in the other side. She’s going to leave, without a choice in the matter, and she’ll never be beloved by her dad again. Maybe she’s already changed too much, and her mother won’t come around at all, but even when she did in Quinn’s memories, it was so late. That Quinn had been relieved just to get one parent back, and Quinn understands that, but she doesn’t think she can do the same thing as the other her, forgive her mother and go on after months of no contact. 

Quinn feels like she’s in something of a daze the last two days of the week, still avoiding Mr. Schuester and watching Ms. Pillsbury, knowing that when she comes to school on Monday, everything will have changed for her, even if not for anyone else. Quinn leaves school and heads home to eat before the football game, the last one of the season, and she’s so preoccupied with the next day that she doesn’t even wonder who her mother is talking to on the phone. 

She takes a shower and dries her hair, putting on her Cheerios uniform and doing almost all of her makeup and her hair. Quinn bends over to tie her shoes, wondering if that really will become impossible, when her mother calls up the stairs. 

“Quinn? Come here, please.” 

“Coming, Mom!” Quinn calls back, picking up her backpack and her Cheerios bag before heading down the stairs. If she has the opportunity to spend the night with Mercedes or Brittany, she’ll take it, and leave her backpack there.

Quinn stops in the kitchen, heading for the refrigerator, and her dad’s voice makes her freeze. “Quinn, we had a very interesting telephone call just now from the school nurse.” 

“The nurse?” Quinn echoes, frowning. She isn’t sure they replaced the position after Mrs. Schuester had to resign. “Who is that?” 

“Terri Schuester,” Quinn’s mom says, and Quinn closes her eyes briefly before turning to face her parents, who are looking at her. Her mother looks sad and confused; her father just looks angry. “Quinn, I’m sure she was just confused, but she said you were _pregnant_. I told her that of course you weren’t, you were the president of that celibacy club and your boyfriend was a true gentleman, but she insisted that you were and that we should ask you.” 

“If she’s wrong, I’ll sue,” Quinn’s father says. “You aren’t denying it, though, Quinn.” He folds his arms in front of him. “You slept with your boyfriend like some common-variety trash and now you’re pregnant, aren’t you?” 

Quinn lifts her chin, taking several deep breaths. “And if I am?” 

“I can’t have a pregnant Jezebel living here,” her father says, and it’s not easy to keep from flinching at his words. “You have thirty minutes.” 

“Russell,” her mother says, and Quinn has a brief flare of hope. Maybe she’s changed enough things that her mom will stick up for her this time. Maybe her mom will come with her. Her father looks at her mom and motions for her to continue speaking. “At least give her forty-five.” 

The hope leaves, and Quinn takes all of the steel she can muster to hold her head and back straight as she climbs the stairs to her room again. The advantage of her plan was that Finn would have been beside her, that they could have met Puck after leaving, that she wouldn’t have to face this expected outcome _alone_. Instead, Terri Schuester had stolen that from her, and Quinn is painfully aware of how alone she is as she zips her suitcase and packs her remaining box. She carries them downstairs, putting them in her car, followed by her backpack and Cheerios bag, and she wonders if her parents will ask for her car back, once it hits them that she has it. The advantage to being somewhat spoiled, Quinn muses as she climbs the stairs again, ignoring her father’s stare, is that her car’s title is in her name, her parents having paid for it outright. She can probably sell it and buy something cheaper, or hold onto it while it’s still under warranty. 

Quinn looks around her room a second, third, and fourth time, and fills half of a box with things she isn’t sure she wants. She doesn’t want to give her parents the satisfaction of throwing them out, though, so she puts them in her car. If she doesn’t want to keep them, she’ll throw them away or take them to a thrift store herself. 

Only twenty minutes have passed when Quinn decides she’s stalled long enough, though part of her insists it’s been much longer. She picks up her purse and removes the debit card connected to her now-empty Chase account, leaving it on her empty desk just as she puts her laptop into its bag and slides it on her other shoulder. 

Quinn doesn’t look back as she closes the door to her bedroom—her old bedroom, she corrects herself—and she looks straight ahead as she walks down the stairs and past her parents into the garage and out to her car. Neither of them say anything, and Quinn doesn’t try to speak to them. Her father probably wants her to scream or cry or beg, and she can’t, won’t give him that satisfaction. 

She arrives at the stadium forty-five minutes ahead of even Sylvester’s absurdly early required arrival time, and Quinn decides to savor the moment, one of her last as a Cheerio as a sophomore. This time, she at least knows she’ll be back on the squad eventually. Maybe she’ll write a letter and leave it in Coach’s office after the game, even. Leave on her own terms, since Terri Schuester stole that from her at home. 

The worst part is that she can’t let on what’s happened to anyone, not yet. Santana would pounce on her weakness, and the football team performs poorly enough without Finn and Puck knowing before or during the game. She needs to figure out where she’s sleeping that night, but if she has to tell Mercedes before the game, she’ll break down. Maybe she’ll be lucky and Brittany will want to host a sleepover, and Quinn can sit quietly on her pain for twelve or eighteen more hours. 

Quinn examines herself in the mirror as the other Cheerios start to arrive, and she nods at her reflection. Even with everything else that’s happening and will happen, for the moment, she’s still the head Cheerio, and she will be again. That thought sustains her through the locker room chatter, through stretching and warm ups, and through the pregame. The cold air and the excitement of the game helps her forget about everything long enough to shoot genuine smiles at Finn and Puck and Mercedes, and as the game begins, she thinks that she can handle it. She’ll get through the game and the evening and the night, and then the weekend and the next week and the next month. 

By halftime, her resolve is faltering. The team is performing as expected, so she knows she can’t blame the score on her mood. Someone being kicked out of their home at age sixteen is simply something awful, Quinn knows intellectually, no matter how much she tried to prepare herself. Her mood isn’t helped when Brittany announces that she and Santana are having a private sleepover to the locker room in general. One of the juniors says she’s having a sleepover that everyone’s invited to, but Quinn can’t accept it. If she does show weakness, if she does break down, being with people she doesn’t know well isn’t the place she wants to be. 

During the third quarter, Quinn scans the stands for Mercedes, and during a long time-out in the fourth quarter, Quinn starts to leave the rest of the squad and go outright ask Mercedes if she can spend the night. Before she can put her pompoms down, though, she checks where Mercedes was seated again and realizes that, no doubt because of the score, Mercedes and her family have already left. If Quinn weren’t a Cheerio and if Finn and Puck weren’t on the team, she probably would have left, too. 

Still, it’s the other of her two best options closed off, and as soon as the time runs out on the game, Quinn sprints to the locker room, changing before anyone else can get a glimpse of her. She isn’t sure if she’s showing or just occasionally bloated, but if someone questioned it, Quinn is sure Santana would think hinting about it wasn’t breaking Mercedes’s edict. Brittany might even assume the questioner knew about Quinn’s pregnancy and talk about it factually. 

Quinn pulls out a piece of notebook paper and hurriedly scrawls out a resignation letter, knowing that Coach Sylvester is likely to publish it online or in the Lima newspaper. She leaves it on Coach’s desk, underneath an empty coffee mug, and then shoulders her Cheerios bag, leaving the locker room and heading towards the football team’s locker room. Once there, she leans against the wall next to the door, watching Matt, Mike, and some of the other team members leave seemingly without noticing her there. 

When the door opens again and Quinn can hear both Finn and Puck’s voices, she feels oddly relieved, and she lets her shoulders slump for the first time in hours. 

“Boys,” she says as soon as she can see them coming through the door. 

“Hi!” Finn says, smiling as soon as he sees her. He has one arm slung across Puck’s shoulders. 

“What are you doing tonight?” Quinn asks, trying to keep her tone light. 

“Me and Puck figured we’d hang out tonight, since I’m eating dinner with you tomorrow,” Finn says. 

“Yeah, we just hadn’t decided if it’s gonna be at my house or Finn’s,” Puck says. 

“Well, you don’t have to worry about eating dinner with my parents anymore,” Quinn says. 

Finn’s smile fades, and his arm drops away from Puck’s shoulders. Instead, he reaches for Quinn, putting a hand on each of her arms. “What happened?” 

“Terri Schuester happened,” Quinn says. “She told them she was the school nurse still.” 

“Still lying,” Puck says, looking around like Terri Schuester is going to appear and he can yell at her or possibly beat her up. “She told them?” Quinn nods. 

“She’s just evil,” Finn says. “What did your parents say?”

“That I had thirty minutes.” Quinn laughs, because if she doesn’t, she’ll start crying. “My mother told him to give me at least forty-five.” 

“Shit,” Puck says. “We should go beat him up. Or egg his car or something.” 

“We know how to make pee balloons,” Finn offers. 

Quinn laughs, putting her hand over her mouth. “The seats in his car are leather,” she says through her hand.

“Even better!” Puck says. 

“Are you okay, though?” Finn asks. “I mean, we can still do the pee thing either way, if you want.”

“I don’t know. I don’t… I don’t have anywhere to sleep tonight.” 

“Guess that decides where we’re going,” Puck says. “You know my mom’s less likely to ask.” 

“Yeah,” Finn agrees. “It’s all gonna be okay, Quinn. You’ve just gotta keep listening to what the angel told you, and everything’ll be fine, right?”

Quinn nods. “It will. You’re right. I think I thought it’d be easier this time, knowing it was coming.” 

Puck shakes his head and puts his arm around Quinn’s shoulders almost gently. “Still your parents. You’re allowed to be upset.” Finn nods his agreement, still holding onto Quinn’s arms. He leans in and gives her a quick kiss on her left cheek. Puck kisses her right cheek, and Quinn smiles a little. It’s enough to make her straighten again, enough to make her suddenly hope some of the other Cheerios are around, watching. 

“We can go now?” she asks quietly after a few more seconds pass. 

“Yeah. We’ll get some food on the way to Puck’s,” Finn says. “What do you think the baby wants to eat?”

“A hamburger and a baked potato,” Quinn says immediately. 

Puck grins. “Wendy’s it is?” 

“You should probably get a Frosty, too, just in case,” Finn says, putting his arm around Quinn’s waist. 

“No chili, though,” Quinn says. “Only hamburgers, potatoes, and Frosties.” 

“No chili. Yes, ma’am,” Puck says, still grinning. “Or no, ma’am. You get the idea.” 

 

Quinn had never really wondered what boys did when they had a sleepover, but by the time the three of them are in their pajamas eating Lucky Charms at ten am on Saturday morning, she knows that the answer is ‘nothing that different from girls’. Puck finds a channel playing _Ghostbusters II_ and insists they watch while they eat, which is probably why they don’t realize the knocking sound is real and not on the television at first. 

“Puck?” Quinn says when the movie gets quiet for a moment, and she still hears the knocking over the sound of the three of them chewing. “I think someone’s knocking.” 

“Weird,” Puck says, but he puts down his cereal and walks towards the door. Quinn hears it open, followed by Puck saying, “Hey, Ms. Hudson.” 

“Hello, Noah,” Ms. Hudson says. “I think we’d better get your mother and all sit down in the living room. We need to have a talk.”

“Oh shit,” Finn whispers. 

“It’s not next week yet!” Quinn whispers back to Finn. 

“Uhhh. Sure?” Puck says to Ms. Hudson, and Quinn cringes a little as she hears them walking back towards the living room. “Mom!” Puck yells out. 

“Do you think we need to go in there right now?” Finn whispers to Quinn. 

Quinn sighs. “Probably,” she admits. “Grab Puck’s cereal, though.” She stands up with her own bowl in hand, almost running into Ms. Puckerman as she walks down the hall. Quinn decides that hiding between Ms. Puckerman and Finn isn’t the worst idea she’s ever had, and she stays there as they walk into the living room. 

“Oh, hello, Carole,” Ms. Puckerman says. 

“Hi, Debbie,” Ms. Hudson says. “I think you’d better have a seat. Finn, Quinn, both of you need to sit as well.” 

Finn hands Puck his bowl of cereal. Puck takes it and raises his eyebrows at Finn and Quinn both, then nods towards the sofa. Quinn sits between the two of them, still clutching her cereal. 

“What’s going on, Carole?” Ms. Puckerman asks as she sits in the recliner. 

“I received a call from Russell Fabray last night,” Carole begins, pausing to sigh loudly. “Boys? I think at least one of you might know what he called me about.”

“No, they both know,” Quinn says after the silence starts to stretch out. 

“Russell indicated that he wasn’t certain who the—” Carole interrupts herself. “I’d better start at the beginning. Debbie, Russell called to tell me that the school nurse informed him yesterday that Quinn is pregnant. Apparently, the nurse wasn’t sure if the father is Finn or Puck, as she’s seen both of them being quite—” She clears her throat. “ _Affectionate_ with Quinn.”

“She’s not the nurse,” Puck says angrily. “She lied about that. She’s Mr. Schuester’s wife. And she’s mad ‘cause Quinn won’t let her adopt the baby and let her pretend it’s hers!” 

“Yeah, she’s been lying to Mr. Schue about being pregnant. Mrs. Schuester, I mean,” Finn says. “She wanted to steal Quinn’s baby, and Quinn said that if Mrs. Schuester didn’t tell Mr. Schuester, that she would. She’s _evil_ , Mom!”

“But Quinn _is_ pregnant?” Ms. Puckerman asks. “Quinn?” 

Quinn nods. “I am. I was going to tell my parents tonight. Now I don’t have to.” 

“Russell said they weren’t letting you stay at home,” Ms. Hudson says gently.

“Mercedes said I could live with her. I think that’s probably better than living with either of these two,” Quinn says, smiling a little in spite of the conversation. Living with Finn for those few weeks hadn’t been horrible, except for how it had ended, and living with Puck had meant listening to Ms. Puckerman talk about Judaism a lot, but those aren’t the memories that make Quinn know Mercedes’s house will be better. The simple fact is that Puck and Finn are both teenage boys, and she remembers that both of them have rooms that smell horrible from time to time. 

“Finn could move in here and you could have Ms. Hudson,” Puck whispers loudly. 

“But I like my house,” Finn loud-whispers back. “And I like my mom.”

“I think Debbie and I should talk to Mercedes'sparents to see if this is actually okay with them,” Ms. Hudson says. “If you’ll give me her number, we can iron that out now. Making sure you have a place to stay and that you’re able to get to your doctor appointments is the most important thing. We can talk about the rest after I’ve talked to Mercedes and her parents.”

“My car’s title is in my name. I have my own bank account that my father can’t access,” Quinn says. “And now that I don’t live at home, I can go to the health department.” 

“Quinn’s smart,” Puck says, looking at Ms. Hudson and Ms. Puckerman. “See?” 

“Still, we’ll make that call first, and then we’re going to figure out what we’re all going to do from there,” Ms. Hudson says. 

Quinn frowns but stands up and goes back to Puck’s room, getting her phone and handing it to Ms. Hudson. “I don’t know how to get my number on my own phone plan, though,” she admits. 

Ms. Hudson and Ms. Puckerman stand up and go outside, presumably to call Dr. and Mrs. Jones, and Quinn sits back down with a huff. “Is there more Lucky Charms?”

“Yeah. I’ll go get the box and the milk,” Puck says, and he comes back with both quickly. “I didn’t think they’d call Mercedes’s parents.” 

“I guess they want to make sure you’ve got a nice place to stay,” Finn says to Quinn, then turns to Puck. “Right? Everybody wants her to be taken care of.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Puck says, shrugging a little. “Your mom always calls more people, though.” 

“I would tell them if I really didn’t have anywhere,” Quinn says. “I hope she doesn’t tell Mercedes’s parents anything to make them change their minds.” 

“She won’t. Mom has always liked you,” Finn says. 

“I guess so,” Quinn says softly. She says quiet until the door opens again, and Ms. Hudson and Ms. Puckerman come back into the living room. 

“Well, Mrs. Jones says you’ll be welcome there as long as you need to stay,” Ms. Hudson says. “Now. Quinn. Obviously one of the boys has a serious obligation to you and your baby, but since you’re all only sophomores, a good part of that obligation is going to fall on either me or Debbie. Will you please tell me if Finn is the baby’s father?”

Quinn looks at Ms. Hudson, then Finn, then at Puck, before looking at Ms. Puckerman last. “She’s going to be adopted,” Quinn says. 

“One of the boys’ names will still be on the birth certificate, Quinn,” Ms. Hudson says. “And you’ll need things. Clothes, maybe medicine. Don’t you think the father should have to shoulder some of that responsibility?”

“We could flip a coin for the birth certificate,” Puck says, looking at Finn.

Finn shrugs. “Sounds fair.”

“Boys! Are you trying to say you don’t know which one of you is the father?” Ms. Hudson demands. 

“If it’s not that important to us, what’s the big deal?” Puck asks. 

“Is this some kind of scheme the two of you have concocted to avoid your monetary obligations?” Ms. Puckerman asks. “You two cannot put all of this on Quinn.” 

“I’d help take care of her no matter what!” Finn says. “Me and Puck _both_ want to help. We’re not trying to get out of anything. We just want to do it all together.”

“Exactly. All three of us,” Puck says, and Quinn nods her agreement. 

“But only one of you is that baby’s father,” Ms. Hudson says. “Quinn. Please.”

Quinn looks at Puck and Finn again, then at Ms. Hudson, shaking her head slightly. “They both are.” 

“Now, Quinn, you know that isn’t true,” Ms. Hudson says. 

“Sure it is,” Finn says. “We’re both gonna make sure everything’s taken care of. It’s like those old commercials, Mom.”

“This is very unusual. You know that there will be all sorts of rumors about all three of you, right?” Ms. Puckerman asks. “Not just Quinn.” 

“Sure, Mom,” Puck says. “We know.” 

“Finn, are you _sure_ you’re okay with all of this?” Ms. Hudson asks.

Finn nods. “Yeah, Mom. I know what I’m doing. I love Quinn. I want to support her and stuff.”

Ms. Hudson sighs. “Obviously we can’t force you to tell us, but you all need to understand that if you won’t be upfront about who fathered this baby, the hospital will probably make you both take a paternity test.”

“Why would the hospital care?” Puck asks. “If she’s going to be adopted, as long as we flip a coin and the same person is on the birth certificate and the paperwork, why would they give us a test?” 

“Puck has a point,” Quinn acknowledges.

“What if Quinn’s parents try to get custody?” Ms. Hudson asks. “One of you could be liable for child support!”

Quinn starts laughing, setting down her bowl hurriedly as she laughs harder and harder. “Oh, Ms. Hudson,” she says as best she can as she laughs, “they’d have to want to acknowledge that I and she exist!” 

Finn scowls at Ms. Hudson. “Mom! You upset Quinn!”

“Hey Ms. Hudson!” Puck says. “You’re not supposed to do that!” 

“She’s not crying, she’s laughing!” Ms. Hudson protests.

“But she’s _upset laughing_ , Mom!”

Quinn grabs at their legs, still laughing and shaking her head, because she can’t think of anything less likely than Russell and Judy Fabray wanting custody of their illegitimate half-Jewish granddaughter. 

“Hey. It’s okay,” Puck says, patting her hand. “Rub her back or something!” 

Finn nods and starts rubbing a circle on Quinn’s back, making a low, soothing noise as he does so. Quinn leaves her hand under Puck’s and leans against Finn’s side, trying to take deep breaths between fits of laughter. 

“You can’t do that,” Puck says, and Quinn can picture him frowning and looking stubborn, but she doesn’t open her eyes. 

“I’m just trying to be realistic!” Ms. Hudson says. Quinn shakes her head, because she can’t think of anything less realistic than her parents trying to get custody of Beth. 

“Since we know Quinn has a place to stay, maybe we should all get together for lunch tomorrow afternoon,” Ms. Puckerman says. Quinn shakes her head and squeezes Puck’s leg. He doesn’t say anything, but a few second later, Ms. Puckerman says “Or next weekend.” 

“Only if everybody stops asking whose baby it is,” Finn says firmly. 

“It’s ours,” Quinn says quietly. “All three of ours.” 

Neither of the mothers say anything for a while, then Ms. Hudson sighs again. “When do you plan to go to Mercedes’?” she asks Quinn. 

Quinn straightens and looks at Ms. Hudson, feeling a little confused. “Later?” she says. “It’s still before noon.” She gestures to their pajamas. “And then we’re going…” she trails off and looks at Puck and Finn. “Where are we going this week?” 

“We’re going to see a, uh. Play?” Finn says, also looking at Puck. “It’s a play, right?”

“Yeah, at Bowling Green State. It’s something about a spelling bee. We’ll be back before Finn’s curfew, though, Ms. Hudson.” 

Ms. Hudson sighs again, even more loudly this time. “Oh, boys.”

“We’re doing smart-people stuff, Mom,” Finn says. “That’s a good thing!”

“Yeah, it’s live theatre!” Puck adds, and Quinn has to suppress a smile at their enthusiasm. 

“To answer your question, then, Ms. Hudson, I’ll probably take the last of my things to Mercedes’s house before we go to Bowling Green,” Quinn says. 

“Oh. Okay, yes, I guess that makes sense,” Ms. Hudson says. 

“And next weekend sounds fine, Ms. Puckerman,” Quinn says, reaching for the box of Lucky Charms and pouring herself more. “I can’t remember the last time I ate thirds of cereal.” 

 

Quinn decides, about ten minutes after Ms. Hudson leaves, to try to forget about her parents at least for the remainder of the weekend. That does let her relax and have some fun, first at Puck’s and then when she takes the rest of her things to Mercedes’s house and unloads the boxes from her car, even if she doesn’t unpack them. The play in Bowling Green isn’t particularly well-staged, but she still has fun, and when she gets back to Mercedes’s house, it feels more like a sleepover than anything else. 

She sleeps in on Sunday morning, and she thinks for a few minutes about church and her parents’ social life, and wonders what they’ll try to tell people. Then she makes herself stop thinking about them, stop thinking about the life she left completely behind, and decides to go to the Lima Bean to do the week’s homework. Eventually, she’ll need to discuss with Mercedes’s parents how they’ll make sure the Joneses still have family time without Quinn present, but for the day, it’s most expedient to just go to the Lima Bean for several hours. 

Quinn laughs to herself as she finishes her homework, because after Regionals senior year, she’s going to have to start actually studying and learning again, and it’ll be something of a shock to her system, probably. She should probably add an elective to her second semester schedule, and maybe an additional AP class junior year, just so she doesn’t forget how to study. 

Even Sunday night doesn’t feel that strange, even though it’s not her bed and there are boxes stacked around the room. Quinn promises herself that she’ll come home from school on Monday afternoon and start unpacking things into the empty chest of drawers and bookcase already in the room. Tuesday afternoon, she thinks about going shopping for a new pair of sheets. The ones Mercedes’s parents have for the bed she’s sleeping in are almost too slick and too nice, and she’s always wanted to try the t-shirt-like sheets, anyway. 

On Monday morning, though, Quinn freezes as she unzips her suitcase and opens a few bags. She can barely remember going to McKinley on a day where she wasn’t wearing her Cheerios uniform, and now she faces many, many days without it. Only a few, she can admit inside her head, before she has to consider bigger clothes or elastic waistbands, and then maternity clothes, but she thinks—hopes—she can make it at least through Thanksgiving with her own clothes, and then through Christmas with some modifications. That’s mostly how it worked in her memories, but her clothing specifics are hazy, and Quinn thinks it would be somehow unsurprising if she’d managed to change that as well. 

After spending so long staring at her clothes that she has to scramble to get dressed so that she won’t be late, Quinn almost forgets about the reaction the rest of McKinley will have, seeing her outside of her Cheerios uniform. She’s more worried about grabbing breakfast, about making it to school before the last bell rings, and even when she starts walking quickly down the crowded hall to her locker, she still doesn’t immediately register the startled and confused looks that the rest of the students are giving her. For whatever reason, they still part in front of her, the same as they did on Friday and every other day of the school year, and it’s only that residual habit that means she makes it to her locker and her first period class without being tardy. 

By second period, Quinn is too aware of how everyone is staring at her, and she mostly avoids their questioning gazes. Sometimes, though, the temptation is too great, and she stares back, refusing to blink first and smiling to herself in satisfaction when the other student looks away. That is her method of getting through the day on Monday, that and observing the people she finds interesting, and at the end of the day she doesn’t go to Cheerios practice. Instead, she drives to Mercedes’s house, where she’s the only person there, and she starts to unpack her clothes, hanging up some and putting others in the drawers. In the weeks that have passed since she first started giving Mercedes some of her clothes, Quinn’s realized that some of them aren’t really her style, and she makes a pile of them to take to a consignment shop. Her mother’s influence is clear when she looks at all of them put together. 

She has enough time before when Mercedes said they would have dinner to load the clothes in her car and take them to the consignment shop, and after dinner she unpacks some of her books and shelves them. By the time she goes to bed, the room still doesn’t feel like hers, but it feels less like a stranger’s. 

Tuesday at McKinley is very similar to Monday, but Quinn observes even more flirting behavior from Kurt than she had on Monday, which was still more than just a few weeks earlier. All of it, as Quinn would have expected, is focused on Finn, and throughout the day on Tuesday, she gets increasingly irritated. 

After school, she goes to Sheets ‘N Things to get the t-shirt sheets she wants, and as she walks slowly through the aisles, she scowls to herself. Kurt flirting with Finn doesn’t do anyone any good. Eventually, Puck will notice too, and they’ll have even more to deal with between the three of them. However willing and even somewhat eager Finn is to make out with Puck, Quinn knows that she never saw any indication of a similar willingness from Finn with regard to Kurt. And Kurt himself—Quinn can’t imagine he’ll be that pleased with his own actions once the reality of being part of Finn’s family settles in. Quinn knows she can’t tell Kurt everything, but she decides to observe for at least another day and then reevaluate. Nothing about the week stands out in her memory, except for their preparation for Sectionals, and Quinn thinks that means it must have been relatively uneventful. 

Quinn watches Kurt flirt—somewhat badly—with Finn at least twice on Wednesday, and she spends her time in the shower on Wednesday evening deciding what, exactly, she should do about it. Finn isn’t flirting back, which is probably why Puck has barely noticed yet, and Quinn doesn’t think Finn will start flirting back, but she still feels like someone needs to talk to Kurt. There comes a point in everyone’s life, Quinn reflects, when they flirt, even repeatedly, with someone who is truly not interested but is unfortunately too nice or too clueless to be explicit. Some people pick up on it on their own, eventually; some people need someone to gently point it out to them. 

Quinn isn’t particularly gentle, but she’ll be that person for Kurt. She’ll have a talk with him about stopping the flirting and about how to read people better, maybe, though she doubts Kurt will listen to her. The continuous flirting is awkward and difficult to watch, too, so she’s really doing many people a favor. 

With that in mind, Quinn stops Kurt on Thursday morning and tells him to meet her at lunchtime. She has her lunch packed, so she won’t have to go near the lunchroom and its smells that way, either. As soon as the bell for lunch rings, Quinn heads towards the rehearsal room, empty except for the band’s instruments and their usual chairs on the risers. She looks around and laughs to herself, walking to the whiteboard. She picks up a marker and writes ‘Flirting’ across it, wondering if she leaves it there, will Mr. Schuester consider it as a theme for the week? 

After she caps the marker and sets it back down, she hears the door open and she turns to face Kurt. 

“Kurt. I hope you don’t mind if I eat while we chat?” Quinn pulls her food out of her backpack and, after looking around to make sure the piano player isn’t lurking, sets it on top of the piano.

“Of course not,” Kurt says. He sets his bag down next to one of the chairs in the front row, then sits down slowly, like he’s trying to ensure the chair makes no noise whatsoever as he puts his weight onto it. “What did you need to talk to me about?” 

“We’re going to talk about boys,” Quinn says with a small smile. “Flirting with boys, how to tell if a boy likes you, how to tell if a boy _doesn’t_ like you, and how to avoid appearing foolish.” 

Kurt purses his lips, and for a moment Quinn is struck by how young he still looks. He’s not the confident boy she’d known at the beginning of her junior year, nor the triumphant returning one at the end of junior year, and he’s definitely not the overly-Blaine focused senior who had managed to be less self-confident inwardly but more self-confident outwardly. Now he’s just a sophomore, a little bit out of his depth, and Quinn reminds herself not to be too harsh. 

“While I appreciate your desire to give me advice, Quinn, I don’t really think that things work the same for me as they do for you,” Kurt finally says, a little more stiffly than Quinn expected, and she shakes her head. 

“The people we’re interested in, Kurt, are the same for both of us. I’m not going to give you makeup tips, and you know that.” 

“That doesn’t mean you have any advice I need to hear,” Kurt says, a faint note of defensiveness in his voice as he speaks, and Quinn almost wants to nod as she chews. Of course he’s feeling defensive; in Kurt’s mind, he and Quinn are rivals for Finn’s affections, just as he likely considers Rachel to be their rival as well. Quinn knows there is little chance, if there were ever any chance at all, for Kurt to truly be any kind of rival, but Kurt doesn’t see it that way—that’s the entire reason she’s having to talk to him. 

“I have advice that you need to hear, yes, but the real question is whether or not you want to hear it, and whether or not you will listen to it,” Quinn says. “Whether or not you’ll take what I’m saying seriously instead of dismissing it out of hand. I suggest you do.” 

“Why? Because you have more experience? Because you’re going to make sure that you always win? What do you need from me, Quinn?” Kurt asks. 

Quinn shakes her head. “I don’t need anything from you, Kurt. I know that you likely don’t believe me, but most of my reasoning behind talking to you today has to do with _your_ best interests and long-term happiness.” 

“Quinn Fabray, humanitarian?” Kurt says acerbically. 

“Quinn Fabray, willing to share a few things she knows,” Quinn counters. 

“Have we reached the part where you warn me off of ‘your man’, then?” Kurt asks. “The part where you tell me that Finn isn’t gay and he could never be interested in another boy? The part where you threaten me, maybe, or perhaps instead you try to bribe me with tales of your gay cousin or the son of a man your father works with?” 

Quinn narrows her eyes. “I don’t need to warn you off anyone because relationships are about choices. People choose who they want to be with and who they don’t.” Quinn sighs and, as she eats, thinks about her memories, how she dated Sam and cheated on him with Finn, and how before, she’d wanted to blame Finn in some way for her actions. She can realize in a weird form of retrospect that it was entirely her own desires and her own decisions, because what she said to Kurt is true. People choose they want to be with. 

“Then why shouldn’t I make Finn aware of his choices?” 

Quinn sighs again and swallows. “Kurt. You _have_ made Finn aware that you see yourself as one of his choices. So has Rachel Berry. He’s not as dense and unobservant as the two of you seem to think he can be. He is, however, almost too nice, and he would never want to hurt a friend’s feelings, especially when the friend clearly has a different depth of feeling.” 

“Did he _tell_ you to say that? Did he ask you to talk to me? Did he tell you any of that himself?” 

“He really didn’t have to, Kurt,” Quinn says. “I recognize the signs and I know how he operates. I’m not going to tell you anything about Finn’s sexuality or who he could or could not be interested in, but I also have years of observing him helping me to reach the conclusion that he’s not interested in you.” Quinn softens her voice as best she can. “I’m sorry, Kurt. I’m not trying to tell you it’s a positive thing for you. I am trying to make sure you know this before you continue on flirting. I want you to think about how you’ll feel in six months or a year or eighteen months, when your memories of your friendship with Finn are colored by the lengths to which you went to flirt with him and to try to win him over.” 

“I have to give you credit, Quinn. That’s a novel sort of threat of a type I hadn’t actually anticipated,” Kurt says. “Threatening me with my own future regret, remorse, even humiliation I suspect? That’s got to be a new low—even for you.” 

“I’m not threatening you, Kurt. I’m not bribing you. I’m telling you that you want to think about the signals Finn has or has not been sending you, and you will want to think about how your actions _now_ will affect your _future_ relationship with him!” Quinn shakes her head. “I wouldn’t try to set you up with someone just because they were gay!” 

“No gay cousin?” Kurt says sardonically. “Maybe _you’re_ the gay cousin.” 

“I think my condition suggests otherwise,” Quinn says dryly. “If I have a gay cousin, it’s not something that would have ever been discussed.” 

“No gay sons of coworkers of your parents? I can’t be bought off with a bribe, but I’m not above appearing to take the bribe, you understand,” Kurt says. 

“I moved out this weekend because Terri Schuester called my parents pretending to be the school nurse,” Quinn says flatly. “If my parents will kick me out for being pregnant, what makes you think my father’s coworkers or employees would feel safe telling him that they have a gay child?” 

Kurt flushes a little, managing to look somewhat chagrined at Quinn’s statement. “I’m sorry about Mrs. Schuester,” he finally says. 

“She hopefully won’t be that for long,” Quinn says, mostly under her breath, but Kurt must hear at least part of her sentence, because he looks somewhat startled. 

“If you aren’t going to threaten or bribe me, Quinn, then why are we here?” Kurt asks. “If it were just to brag about Finn, you would have done that in front of more glee club members, or perhaps the Cheerios or the football team.” 

“I’m not bragging. I’m telling you that everyone, including Finn and including you, would be far happier if you immediately stopped flirting with Finn and focused on building a friendship with him.” 

“‘Immediately’. There it is,” Kurt says. “Quinn Fabray’s dictate, almost from on high?” 

“Some people don’t read the people they’re flirting with very well, not until they develop with some practice or receive some guidance, or both,” Quinn insists. “I’m providing you guidance while you develop and practice. Finn isn’t interested in you. He would make a very good friend for you, a relationship that would benefit both of you.” 

“Which would also suit exactly what you want,” Kurt says as he stands. “It would even make you look tolerant, I expect. Your boyfriend with the gay friend.” 

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Quinn snaps. “It’s excruciating to watch, Kurt. Your flirting is awkward and while Finn likes you as a person and as a friend, it’s clear he doesn’t view you as a romantic interest. It’s also clear that he doesn’t know how to tell you that he doesn’t see you that way, probably because he’s afraid of hurting your feelings or something similar. The result is that you flirt increasingly badly and obviously, Finn gets more uncomfortable, and the rest of us cringe. Learn to read people better, Kurt. _That’s_ what I’m saying.” 

“Oh, and you’re so good at that?” 

“Better than you are!” Quinn says, setting her water bottle down with a bang on top of the piano. 

“So that’s ‘all’ you want from me?” Kurt asks sarcastically. “To learn to read people better, and to make sure I read Finn the way you do, so that I’ll stop flirting with him? Such a small thing to ask, you’re probably thinking.” 

“I never said this was enjoyable for either of us.” Quinn rolls her eyes. “Would you actually be more comfortable with a direct unenforceable order? Stop flirting with Finn. You’ll thank me in another year’s time.” 

“Oh, I’m sure I will,” Kurt snaps back. “What other pieces of life advice do you have for me?” 

“Don’t join the Cheerios ever,” Quinn says, and when Kurt doesn’t look all that taken aback by the quickness of her response, she plows ahead. “Don’t transfer schools. Don’t date someone that seems exactly like you down to almost every interest. Apply to more than one college.” She laughs bitterly. “Always use protection.” 

“Thank you for this _truly_ enlightening conversation, Quinn,” Kurt says, picking up his bag. “I suspect we’ll have another one of these in the near future.” 

Quinn sighs and shakes her head as she watches Kurt leave the room. “At least it was me,” Quinn says after Kurt leaves, “and not Puck. You might want to stop before it’s Puck.” 

Quinn replays the conversation in her head during her afternoon classes, and by the time their afternoon glee club rehearsal starts, she thinks that the best option of those available to her is to be blunt with Finn about how he needs to be more forthright with Kurt. Another conversation with Kurt would likely only make Kurt more defensive and more likely to dig in his heels, attempting to increase the amount of flirting that he’s doing. An increase in flirting or more than another week’s worth of the current amount would probably get Puck’s attention, and Quinn suspects Puck views Kurt as one of the boys, now—which means that the proper way to settle things would be physically. 

Finn might not enjoy the conversation with Quinn about Kurt, and he probably won’t enjoy the conversation with Kurt, but talking to Finn will still probably be the easiest and best option. She sits between Puck and Finn and, when Mike asks Finn a question about the football off-season, she leans toward Puck. 

“What are you doing after rehearsal?” 

Puck makes a face. “Running errands for my mom.” 

“Oh, well have fun,” Quinn says wryly. “Better you than me.” 

“Better my mom than me, but then she reminded me that she owned the car and that it was possible I had gotten a girl pregnant.” Puck shrugs. “I almost expect her and Ms. Hudson to make us take one of those test-tube baby sperm tests.” 

Quinn isn’t sure what Puck means by that, but then Mr. Schuester starts rehearsal, and for the first time in over a week, Quinn looks directly at him, studying his face. He looks much tireder and much sadder, and when Quinn glances at his left hand, his wedding ring is already gone. It’s clear he’s not yet ready to consider a new relationship, but the earlier discovery of Terri Schuester’s deception has to mean it’s a little easier, Quinn thinks.

When rehearsal ends, Puck leaves to run his mom’s errands, and Quinn snags Finn’s arm, sliding her own through it. “Do you have to go home right away? We could go to the Lima Bean and study and talk for a bit.” 

“Oh. Yeah, we can do that,” Finn says. “Everything’s okay at Mercedes's house though, right?”

“Oh, definitely. They’re lovely. I’ve just been trying to give them a little time each day without me around, you know?” Quinn says. 

Finn beams at her. “You’re really sweet and, like, thoughtful.”

“I’m not, really,” Quinn says honestly. “But I like Mercedes. She’s my friend.” 

“Yeah, she’s a really good friend,” Finn agrees. 

“Ride with me over to the Lima Bean?” 

“Sure,” Finn says. He puts his arm around her waist and escorts her to her car. Quinn gives him a kiss before climbing in her car and driving them to the Lima Bean, suddenly remembering how she had to move the steering wheel as she got farther along. 

Quinn waits until they have their drinks—hot chocolate for both of them—and are seated before Quinn brings up Kurt. “We need to talk about Kurt, Finn.” 

“Uh. Okay. What about him?” Finn asks. 

“I know you’ve noticed he’s been flirting with you more and more. And I also know you’ve been avoiding telling him you’re not interested by acting like you don’t realize what he’s doing,” Quinn says. 

“I kinda don’t know what to say to him,” Finn admits. “I mean, he’s nice, but I’ve got you, and Puck, too, I guess, and you know. I just don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

“I know. And it’s very sweet of you, but it makes him think you could eventually _be_ interested, which just makes him flirt even more,” Quinn points out. 

Finn’s face falls into a deep frown. “Oh. I don’t want to lead him on or anything.”

“I know you don’t.” Quinn sighs. “I tried to talk to him, actually, because his continued flirting is only going to make things more awkward in the future, but I think he thought I was jealous.” Quinn smiles a little. “I didn’t tell him I wasn’t the one with the tendency towards jealousy.” 

Finn looks briefly confused, but then he says, “Ohhh. You mean _Puck_.”

Quinn nods. “He hasn’t really noticed as of right now, and if Kurt stops soon, he won’t, I don’t think, but if Kurt continues, Puck will, in addition to making things infinitely odder in the relatively near future.” 

“Huh?” Finn asks, tilting his head to the side. 

“I wasn’t per se going to tell you this at this point, but remember when I said you have a brother?” Quinn says. Finn nods. “Who do we know who only has a dad, Finn?” 

“Uh… Kurt?” Finn guesses, sounding uncertain. 

Quinn nods. “Burt Hummel.” 

“Wait. The angel says my mom’s gonna marry Burt Hummel?” Finn asks. “And then Kurt would be my brother?”

“Right. Yes. Your brother is Kurt. That’s why the flirting history becomes awkward later, in part,” Quinn explains. 

“Oh. Yeah, I guess that would get kinda awkward.”

“I’m not completely selfless. Of course I’d prefer not to watch someone outside the three of us flirt with any of us, but that’s merely irritation. The only thing that will dissuade Kurt at this point, however, is going to be you being relatively blunt with him,” Quinn says. “I know some of what happens when you aren’t, and it isn’t anything that anyone wants to make happen again.” 

“But what if it makes him cry?” Finn asks. 

“Sometimes people cry, Finn. He has a right to be sad, but I genuinely think he’ll be less sad if you tell him now instead of waiting,” Quinn replies. 

“I don’t like making people cry,” Finn says quietly, “but I’ll do it if you think I should.”

“I think that if I learned anything from my—from the angel, it’s that honesty really does usually work best,” Quinn admits. “A lot of things have already changed. Including how much you smile.” 

“Yeah?” Finn smiles at Quinn. “So, I smile more?”

Quinn returns the smile and nods. “Yeah, you definitely do.” 

“I guess I must be pretty happy, then.”

“I think so. I hope so,” Quinn says. “I’m pretty sure Puck hopes so, too.” 

“Do you think Puck’s happy, too?” Finn asks. 

“He seems a lot happier. I hope so,” Quinn says. “There was something he said, in my dream or whatever it was, and I think as long as we keep him from feeling that way, things are better.” 

Finn nods. “Good.”

Quinn takes a sip of her hot chocolate to hide her sudden smile. “And is that… less weird now?” 

“Kind of,” Finn says, shrugging. “It’s still a little bit weird, but it’s good-weird, you know? Weird, but not bad.”

“A little bit like having two boyfriends, then,” Quinn says. “I can’t complain.” 

 

Quinn keeps her eyes moving throughout the day on Friday, finding Kurt in a crowd or class whenever she can, and when she spots him just before last period, Quinn decides that Finn must have talked to him. Quinn doesn’t make eye contact with Kurt and tries to blend in with the rest of the kids in the hall, something that’s much easier when she’s not in a Cheerios uniform. Kurt passes by without looking in her direction or otherwise noticing her existence, and she sighs, quietly relieved. The flirting had to stop, and Finn had to be forthright, but she knows it still was likely somewhat painful for Kurt—and probably Finn, too, though in a different way. 

An unexpected benefit of living with Mercedes is that Quinn isn’t having to hide food or sneak food out of the kitchen in case she’s hungry. Mercedes’s parents ask her what kind of food she likes, and now that it’s been nearly a week, Quinn has noticed some of her answers appearing in the pantry and refrigerator. Mercedes’s house is also louder than Quinn’s parents’ house, not because the Joneses are loud, but because Quinn’s parents were so quiet. It’s nice, though, Quinn has decided, like a hum of white noise that reminds her that she’s not alone. 

Her date with Finn and Puck on Saturday does not involve driving out of town, just over towards the mall to eat and walk around—they mention something about gentle exercise supposedly being good during pregnancy, and Quinn admits that she’s not doing much now that she’s off the Cheerios—before going to watch back to back movies at the theatre. Quinn gets home just before her brand-new curfew, tiptoeing towards her room and curling up in her t-shirt sheets. 

On Sunday afternoon, Quinn goes to the Lima Bean again, finishing her homework and then trying to remember what had happened in the remainder of the time before Thanksgiving. She remembers the ill-fated hairography experiment, and she wonders if Mr. Schuester will even invite either of the other schools, since he’s dealing with what appears to be a divorce. Quinn also remembers babysitting and the ensuing confrontation with Santana. Quinn can’t be sure without looking at Puck’s phone, but she has a feeling he’s not sexting Santana at all this time, since Santana has still been glaring at her. 

Quinn feels like there must have been other things that happened, but she can’t remember any of them, and nothing pops into her mind as something she needs to specifically change. Given her swift fall from popularity, Quinn feels relatively upbeat on Monday as she goes to school, certainly better than she felt at the same point in her memories. There are a few people who ask her questions about why she’s off the Cheerios, though, something that hasn’t happened before, and Quinn feels like it’s probably only a matter of time before Rachel or Santana spills to someone exactly why Quinn Fabray, Head Cheerleader, is no longer Head Cheerleader or on the Cheerios at all. 

It’s that thought that makes her wonder if she should be proactive, the way she was with the glee club, and start wearing maternity clothes before she actually needs them. She doesn’t have any yet, though, which means Wednesday would be the very earliest that she could try that, and she’s not sure she wants to spend her Tuesday afternoon at the mall buying maternity clothes. 

Quinn instead spends her Monday evening looking at maternity clothes online, and she smiles a little when she recognizes one of the dresses she had before. She does buy it, and if nothing happens between that moment and when it arrives in approximately a week, maybe she will wear it to school. 

During lunch on Tuesday, Quinn is avoiding the cafeteria when suddenly Puck appears, putting his arm around her shoulders. 

“I’m surprised you’re not eating,” Quinn says. 

“I’m not surprised you’re not,” Puck says with a grin. “I already ate.” 

“The lunch bell only rang five or six minutes ago!” 

“I cut the end of my last class and went to the cafeteria early, but there were peas, and the jello was pineapple, which is gross, too, so all I ate was the chicken cacciatore casserole.” Puck shrugs. “All done already.” 

“Well,” Quinn says faintly. “Not that I don’t appreciate the company in my attempt to hide from the smell of pineapple jello, but you seemed to have a purpose.” 

“Maybe,” Puck admits. 

“Out with it,” Quinn demands, smiling at Puck. 

“Well, it’s just… like if Finn and I did stuff while you weren’t around. That’s not cheating, right?” Puck says. 

“Stuff?” 

“Hypothetically. Making out kind of stuff?” Puck asks, trying to look somewhat innocent. 

Quinn’s almost certain that if Puck’s asking, it’s not entirely theoretical, and if he’s admitting to making out, it seems possible that there’s been—or he’s hoping for—something beyond that. 

“Mmm-hmm,” Quinn says, waiting until Puck starts to look almost worried before smiling. “No, Puck, it’s not cheating.” 

“Yeah?” Puck grins. “Cool.” He kisses her, keeping his arm around her shoulders. “So how do you like having two boyfriends.” 

“Oh, I like it. Maybe not as much as you’re enjoying having both a girlfriend and a boyfriend, though?” Quinn guesses. 

“It is pretty good,” Puck says. “You won’t feel neglected?” 

Quinn laughs. “I won’t feel neglected. I promise.” 

 

Quinn takes advantage of what she suspects will be the last warm day of the year on Thursday to eat her packed lunch outside, watching all of the other people who are doing the same and enjoying the ability to eat around other people without having to endure the smell of the cafeteria. She remembers that soon enough, she’ll be able to manage it again, but it hasn’t happened yet. 

She walks back inside and heads towards her locker, changing out her books and checking her lipstick when she hears Finn and Puck walking towards her, and she smiles at her reflection before shutting her locker and looking towards Finn and Puck, still smiling. 

“What’s—” Quinn cuts herself off as she looks at Finn’s face. “You look upset, or confused, or both.” 

“I think both,” Puck says, “but I’m not one hundred percent sure.” 

“Rachel, uh. Did a thing,” Finn says. 

“I’m assuming not a glee club kind of thing?” Quinn asks with a sigh. “Should we find an empty classroom?” 

“Maybe,” Finn says. “Don’t go kill her or anything.”

“Which one of us are you talking to?” Puck asks. “Schue’s classroom is empty right now.” 

“Why would we kill her, Finn?” Quinn says. 

“I don’t know. She kind of went crazy or something,” Finn says. 

Quinn frowns and closes the door to Mr. Schuester’s room behind them, sitting down at one of the desks. Puck sits on top of another one, both of them watching Finn. “What kind of crazy?” Puck says. “Like spirits-crazy?” 

“There was a lot of, uh. Big hair. And _Grease_.”

“Could be possession,” Puck says. 

“I don’t think Rachel Berry’s possessed, Puck,” Quinn says. “Finn, are you… did she try to seduce you or something? With _Grease_?” 

“Yeah, I guess that’s sort of what it was,” Finn says. “She had this, like, catsuit thing on, like Catwoman, and all this make-up, like some kind of… I don’t know. Like a sad clown hooker.”

Puck makes a face. “Did you take pictures? Where’d she get that?” 

“We’re not posting pictures of Rachel Berry as a sad clown hooker, Puck,” Quinn says primly. 

“Yeah, you thought of it, too,” Puck says with a snort and a grin. 

“Nevermind. What did you tell her, Finn?” Quinn asks. 

“That she should stop,” Finn says. “Also I maybe said the sad clown hooker thing out loud.”

“Did she get mad?” Quinn says. 

Finn shrugs. “She got weird.”

“Like crying-weird or mumbling to herself-weird?” Puck asks. 

“The first one,” Finn says. He sighs, shoulder slumping. “I’m kinda tired of making people cry.”

“We’re not crying, at least?” Puck says. 

“Rachel thinks she wants to date you. She actually starts dating someone else in January,” Quinn says. “He’s actually a very good fit for her.” 

“For real?” Finn asks. 

Quinn nods. “His name’s Jesse. They broke up after a few months in my dream, but I think I can make sure that doesn’t happen this time.” 

“Are you going to pay him?” Puck asks. 

“He’ll treat her nice, right?” Finn asks. 

“He will. He has his own flair for over the top drama, but somehow it works for the two of them. If she’s open to dating him even moreso because she’s not waiting for you, Finn, that’s probably better.” 

“So it’s like Rachel squared?” Puck says. “That could be scary.” 

“But she’s happy. And Kurt’ll be happy, too, right?” Finn asks. “I just want everybody to be happy. I feel like I’m messing up everybody’s happy.”

“But would _you_ be happy with either of them?” Quinn asks, holding her breath a little. Finn shakes his head. “You can’t sacrifice _your_ happiness to meet what someone else thinks they need to be happy. I’ve seen this before. Rachel will be happier this way. Kurt will be happier. And you’re already happier.” 

“She’s right, you are.” 

“Yeah,” Finn says. “I am.”

“Hey, so who does Kurt date?” Puck asks. “If he’s happier.” 

“Oh, I was going to change that, too,” Quinn admits. 

“How? Who?” Finn says. 

“I don’t know yet, but he did date a boy named Blaine, who went to Dalton Academy, and they were very much alike. Almost the exact same interests. There was something, though, that made me think Kurt wasn’t as happy as he could have been,” Quinn says. “Since he’s not going to transfer, it won’t be an issue, I suspect.” 

“Why’d he transfer? Transfer where?” Puck asks. 

“To the aforementioned Dalton Academy,” Quinn says. 

“What’s a Dalton Academy?” Finn asks. “Why would Kurt go there?”

“It’s all the way in Westerville, so I’m not entirely sure why your parents sent him there,” Quinn says, “but he went when the bullying got worse.” 

“Prep school?” Puck asks, then makes a face when Quinn nods. 

“If he’s gonna be my brother, he shouldn’t have to go to Westerville,” Finn says. “He should stay here, right?”

“I think so, yes. Things are already different. He was on the football team for the remainder of the season this year, which means it’ll be assumed he’ll be on the team next year, too. That’s a good thing. And I think with minimal effort, the bullying situation can be headed off,” Quinn says. 

“You’re really fixing everything for everybody,” Finn says. He sounds and looks completely awed. 

“Only a few people. Everyone else is incidental,” Quinn admits. Her main goal in everything is still for _her_ to be happy, getting into Yale and being with Finn, and Finn’s happiness, along with Mercedes’s and Puck’s, makes her happy as well. Kurt being happy makes Finn happy; Rachel being happy with Jesse keeps her away from Finn. It’s not as altruistic as Finn thinks, but Quinn does know it makes her look very thoughtful. 

“Who do we have to ‘head off’ on the bullying?” Puck asks. “I mean, you were going to ask us to do that, right?” 

“I was going to get your help, yes, but I suspect that if you two think about it for a few moments, you’ll have a pretty good guess,” Quinn says. 

“It means, uh.” Finn scrunches up his face. “We have to beat them up first?”

“While I suspect that could work, it’s probably not the best solution,” Quinn says. “It’s really only one individual that causes the majority of problems for Kurt, in terms of transferring. And I know why things did change as time went on, but yes, the two of you are probably better suited to approaching him than me.” 

“Is is Azimio? Or Karofsky?” Finn asks. 

Quinn nods slowly. “The latter. Karofsky. He joins the football team next year, too.” 

“Weird,” Puck says. “It’s not some weird thing about making it easier to bully Kurt, is it?” 

“No, Kurt wasn’t on the football team during junior year in my dream,” Quinn says. “I suspect—though you two would know better than I would—that Kurt being on the team may help somewhat, even outside of our other… interference.” 

“So we should beat up Karofsky and tell him to leave Kurt alone,” Finn says. 

“Try talking to him first, before you beat him up, please,” Quinn says. “He’s not a very happy individual at this point in his life. I don’t actually know—things get worse for him and were still bad at the point my dream stopped. You’ll be helping Kurt, yes, but maybe it’ll help Karofsky, too.”

“Is he, like, some kind of secret drug addict or something?” Puck asks. “We’re not trained therapists or anything.” 

“No, he’s not a drug addict, secret or otherwise.” Quinn chews on her lower lip. “I don’t know if I should tell you or not.” 

“Is he a spy?” Finn asks. 

“No, he’s not a spy,” Quinn says, smiling slightly. “It’s just… I shouldn’t tell you, but you will eventually find out, and if I do tell you, you’d understand why Kurt specifically.”

“Probably it’s not a rival car repair thing, right?” Puck asks. Quinn shakes her head, suppressing a laugh. 

“Maybe he wishes he was in glee club, too, but he can’t sing,” Finn says, sounding sad, though it’s possible that he’s disappointed Karofsky isn’t a spy. 

“He actually can sing, but that only happens once,” Quinn says, shaking her head again. 

“Who knew?” Puck says. “We could invite him to join the glee club when we talk to him, but he’d probably think it’d make him look gay or something.” 

“Um. Well.” Quinn frowns. “Yes?” she says as she makes a face. “He would be very worried about that.” 

Finn’s face scrunches up hard, his eyes moving back and forth as he obviously mulls something over. Suddenly, his face relaxes, and his mouth drops open. “No!” he whispers. 

“What?” Puck asks. “What is it?” 

“There’s no way,” Finn says, shaking his head. “I’m crazy, right?”

Quinn shakes her head very slowly. “No, you’re not crazy.” 

“So Karofsky’s really—” Finn breaks off and nods his head once at Quinn.

“Yes,” Quinn says. 

“What? He’s really what? Finn,” Puck almost whines. 

Finn lowers his voice to the softest whisper. “Gay.”

Puck blinks, looking stunned, and he’s quiet for several seconds. “ _Really_ ,” he eventually says. “So he’s like… jealous of Kurt? Or something?” He shrugs and looks at Finn. “We probably can’t lead with that or he’ll punch us.” 

“Maybe he _likes_ him,” Finn says, still whispering. “Maybe it’s like how Stoner Brett used to kick the back of Jordan’s chair all the time in fourth grade, and then Mrs. Fefner said it was because Brett had a crush.”

“I don’t think Kurt understands it, if that’s it,” Puck says. 

“Boys.” Quinn raises her eyebrows. “You do both understand it is not appropriate to physically harass someone for any reason? Including pulling pigtails.”

“But Kurt doesn’t have pigtails,” Finn says. “Neither does Karofsky.”

“Figurative pigtails, then,” Quinn says. 

“We know,” Puck says. “Only pigtails that should be pulled are ones where you say it’s okay.” 

“Close enough. Either way, Karofsky needs to stop, right?” Quinn asks. 

“Right,” Finn says. 

“Okay, so we know why he’s doing it, sort of, but we can’t tell him that outright, but we should focus on talking to him?” Puck asks. 

“That seems wisest, yes,” Quinn says. 

“It would’ve been cooler if he was a spy, though,” Finn grumbles. 

“You can always tell him you think he’d make a good CIA operative?” Quinn suggests. “Then he would be a spy in the future.” 

“ _We_ should be spies!” Puck says to Finn. “We can blend in.” 

“Which college to do you to for being a spy, do you think? Maybe OSU?” Finn says. 

“Maybe one near Yale,” Puck says, looking at Quinn. “Then we can practice spying by visiting Quinn and pretending to be Yale students.” 

“Please don’t poison any of my classmates at Yale,” Quinn says faintly. 

“Not all spies poison people, Quinn,” Finn says, shaking his head at her. 

“Enough of them do,” Quinn says. “I’m going to let the two of you discuss being spies and go play my part with Rachel.” 

“Take a picture!” Puck says. 

“You’re the worst,” Quinn says as she stands up, shaking her head and leaving Mr. Schuester’s classroom. 

If Rachel was crying after her encounter with Finn, then Quinn suspects Rachel probably fled to the bathroom, and is probably still there. Not only that, she probably went to the closest bathroom available to her, which makes it easy for Quinn to narrow down where to look for Rachel to just two choices. She stops by her own locker first, examining herself in the mirror, and then heads to the bathroom that she thinks is least likely. 

As Quinn expected, the bathroom is empty, and Quinn decides to stall for a few minutes longer in it, to make sure no teachers are in the hallways. Then she goes to the other bathroom, pushing the door open more forcefully than she intends before taking in the sight of Rachel at the sinks, no longer crying but still sniffling. 

Quinn isn’t entirely sure how Rachel must have looked, but she has a guess, from the tear tracks and the colors surrounding them on Rachel’s cheeks, and Quinn’s almost grudgingly impressed with the dedication it must have taken to get Rachel’s hair to look like it does. 

“Hello, Rachel,” Quinn says coolly. 

“Go away,” Rachel says, wiping her face with a handful of wadded toilet paper already stained with makeup. 

“What were you hoping to accomplish with all of this?” Quinn asks, gesturing to Rachel’s hair and then her outfit. “Stun him so much that he’d decide to change everything and be with you instead?” 

“You’re so mean,” Rachel sniffles. “You’re going to ruin Finn’s life.”

“None of us are going to be parenting this baby at sixteen, Rachel,” Quinn says. “No one’s life is being ruined. I’m not even sure if you really like Finn or the idea of dating the male lead who is also the quarterback.” Privately, Quinn is almost certain it’s more the idea of it, but that’s an opinion based on years of memories of things Rachel hasn’t done yet. Maybe this Rachel can learn not to put so much importance on how things would appear. 

“He and I would be a wonderful couple if he would just give us a chance,” Rachel insists. 

Quinn shakes her head. “No. He would smile less. He’d look sadder. He doesn’t need to be molded, Rachel. You need a different kind of person, too.” 

“How do you know what I need?” Rachel snaps, dabbing at her eyes with the toilet paper again. “You get everything you want.”

“Oh, definitely.” Quinn rolls her eyes. “You’re a sophomore in high school, Rachel. You’ll meet other boys, maybe even sooner than you think. Finn doesn’t like that you’re unhappy right now, though, so you need to stop pursuing him, because then he has to keep telling you no.” 

“It’s not fair! It’s not fair that you get Finn _and_ Puck!”

“I have three things that no one else does, Rachel, with respect to each of them. All three of us are happiest this way. You simply have to find your happiness outside of either of them. Considering the size of McKinley, it’s hardly like I’ve taken fifty percent of the boys out of contention,” Quinn says. Part of her wants to simply say that life isn’t fair, but she isn’t sure that Rachel might not become more hysterical at that.

“What three things?” Rachel asks, sounding genuinely curious.

“Me, the baby, and, in the case of Finn, Puck. In the case of Puck, Finn.” Quinn shrugs a little. “Look elsewhere, Rachel. Everyone, including you, will be far happier with that situation.” 

“This is going to ruin their friendship eventually,” Rachel says, straightening her back and giving her face one more good scrubs with the wad of toilet paper. “Sooner or later, one of them will get tired and jealous of sharing you with the other, and then you’ll lose _him_ and ruin their friendship.”

Quinn thinks briefly about Puck’s clarification regarding cheating, and she smiles at Rachel, shaking her head. “I don’t think so. I’m a few steps ahead of you, Rachel, and you really need to think about how this looks for _you_. Trying to steal a boy away from his pregnant girlfriend?” Quinn tsks. “I’m only encouraging you to act more rationally.” 

“We’ll see,” Rachel says. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She starts to walk towards the bathroom door. Quinn stretches her arm to the wall in front of Rachel and smiles meanly. 

“Don’t misunderstand me, Rachel,” she says in a low whisper. “You’ll date Finn Hudson only if I am comatose or otherwise incapacitated. I won’t let you drag him down.” 

“Then we’ll all hope for you good health,” Rachel says, falsely bright, as she pushes the door open. 

“Don’t lie, Rachel!” Quinn calls after her. “It’s so unattractive!” 

Quinn lets the door close behind her as she exhales, and reminds herself that Jesse will distract Rachel once he shows up. As long as she can convince Jesse that he should not humiliate Rachel, even if he does return to Vocal Adrenaline, Rachel and Jesse’s relationship could survive. A Rachel who continues dating Jesse, Quinn thinks, is a Rachel who does eventually lose interest in Finn, to the point that maybe even at the end of junior year, Rachel will be able to laugh about her old schoolgirl crush on Finn. 

Quinn starts to picture junior prom, then laughs to herself. Junior prom won’t look all that different from her memories, then, with Rachel and Jesse attending together. Puck won’t be with Lauren, and Quinn fervently hopes the pairing of Santana and Karofsky will not happen at all, but some things won’t change at all. 

 

Quinn almost expects Rachel to announce Quinn’s pregnancy on Friday as retribution, but all Quinn observes is both Kurt and Rachel sulking throughout the day. Finn and Puck suggest that instead of going anywhere on Saturday, they should get takeout for lunch and start a movie marathon at Puck’s, ordering pizza for dinner while they keep watching movies. Quinn agrees, leaving Mercedes’s house around noon on Saturday to drive to Puck’s. After they argue over what movies to watch and eat more Chinese food than Quinn thought possible, the three of them end up sprawled in what Quinn imagines looks like a puppy pile. 

After about half an hour, Quinn shifts her position against Finn, which makes Puck’s arm slide down, and less than a minute later, he says, “Uh, Quinn?” 

“Yeah?” Quinn says, not looking away from the screen. 

“Are you—Finn, put your hand here.” 

“Where?” Finn asks. “Like, right now?” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “In front of Quinn?”

Puck snorts and moves his arm, grabbing Finn’s hand and putting it on top of Quinn’s stomach. “ _Here_.” 

Finn spreads his hand across Quinn’s stomach, not saying anything for a long while. Finally, he quietly says, “Oh. Yeah. Wow!”

“Yeah,” Puck says, his hand next to Finn’s and barely overlapping it. “There’s really a baby in there!” He kisses Quinn’s hair, then asks, “Can she hear us yet?” 

Quinn shakes her head. “Another month or so.” 

“We can sing her Hanukkah and Christmas songs,” Puck says. “Finn, you can get out that CD you used to listen to every year.” 

“Yeah!” Finn says. “Hi, baby,” he add, leaning close to Quinn’s belly. “You’re gonna get some ears so you can listen to music soon!”

Quinn giggles a little, and a small part of her does wish there was a way for three of them to keep Beth and raise her, but she knows the statistics, knows herself and, maybe more importantly, she knows Finn and Puck and the things they’d do and sacrifice, and she can’t let them do that, no matter how easy it feels with the three of them on Puck’s couch and their hands over her barely-there belly. 

“You two aren’t going to think it’s so cute when my stomach gets so big I have to get you to tie my shoes,” Quinn warns. 

“Or we can buy you slip-on shoes,” Puck says jokingly. 

“You could wear those sandal things like Brett and his friends wear,” Finn offers. 

“Nope,” Quinn says, exaggeratedly cheerful. “The two of you and shoelaces.”

“I’ll take the right, you take the left?” Puck asks. 

Finn grins down at Puck’s hand on top of his, on top of Quinn’s belly. “Yeah.”

“We’ll make sure we start offering before you have to ask,” Puck says, and then the room is quiet again, except for the movie. 

“Are the two of you going to leave your hands there the rest of the afternoon?” Quinn asks finally, feeling amused. 

“Mmhmm,” Finn says. 

“Yeah,” Puck agrees, then adds, “Unless you wanted them lower?” 

“Puck!” Quinn says, shaking her head. “Behave, you two.” 

“He’s behaving! He’s trying to be nice!” Finn protests. 

“If you won’t let us be nice that way, we should make out for awhile,” Puck says. “We can all be nice then.” 

Quinn laughs and shakes her head again. “Fine. After this movie, we’ll all make out for awhile.”

 

When Monday at school passes still without any gossip about Quinn possibly being pregnant, Quinn is more than a little bit surprised. The dress she ordered the week before is waiting at Mercedes’s house when Quinn gets there after school lets out, and Quinn tries it on, studying her reflection in the full-length mirror while she’s still the only person at home. 

She _is_ showing, though not as much as the dress suggests, and Quinn contemplates waiting still longer. She could wait Rachel and Santana and possibly even Kurt out, wait for someone to make the wrong remark to Brittany, and maybe that’s even the way to get more sympathy, Quinn knows. Out of all the rumors about Quinn quitting the Cheerios, though, not one that she’s overheard has had anything to do with the possibility of pregnancy. Waiting would also mean that she wouldn’t be prepared for the exact day and time that people find out, and it could ruin an otherwise good day, or be overwhelming and almost devastating on a very bad day. 

With that thought in mind, Quinn takes off the dress and steams it, hanging it in her closet to wait for the next day at school. This way, she controls the narrative. 

Later in the evening, Quinn realizes that she should probably let Finn and Puck know, and she sends the two of them a text. 

_I’m going to wear something tomorrow that will make it obvious. I’m tired of waiting for rumors but people will start asking questions._

Puck sends back _Ok we’ll tell them something ridiculous if they ask_ , and Quinn shakes her head. She has a feeling that there will be a rumor that she’s actually incubating an ostrich egg or something, if Puck has his way. 

_I bet u will look pretty_ is the text Finn sends her, about two minutes later. 

_You’re very sweet Finn_ Quinn replies, followed by _Only rumors of lovechildren with attractive Hollywood actors please_. The last thing she wants is someone suggesting she’s having the lovechild of the vampire actor. 

Quinn keeps her resolve up as she gets ready for bed and falls asleep, and even as she’s getting dressed and eating breakfast the next morning, but as she drives to school, she can feel herself getting nervous. There’s no going back—she’s known that for weeks this time and for far too long in her memories—and while she knows she’ll regain her position on the Cheerios and hold onto her friends and get into a good college, she also knows that there will be rumors and people talking about her both behind her back and to her faces, for month after month. 

She parks the car and sits behind the wheel longer than she usually would, taking a few deep breaths, then climbs out, knowing her coat will obscure her stomach until she’s inside, anyway. Quinn walks to her locker somewhat slower than she otherwise would, then leaves her coat inside it and starts to go to her first class, feeling people slowly starting to notice and stare. 

No one says anything to her directly before first period, everyone’s reactions confined to staring, nudging their friends, and the occasional pointing. During first period, Quinn can hear her name amongst the whispers being passed around, and the same thing happens as she walks to second period. Her name is repeated a little more loudly a time or two in second period, but no one addresses her directly until she’s in the halls afterwards and Santana approaches. 

“You’re looking poppin’ fresh today, Q,” Santana says. “Decided it was time to let yourself go?”

Quinn exhales as quietly as she can. “Was there something you needed particularly, Santana?” 

“I just wanted to congratulate you on the end of your reign at McKinley,” Santana says. 

“Oh? Am I graduating early?” Quinn asks. 

“You don’t think they’re going to elect the pregnant ex-cheerleader homecoming queen, do you? I think you’ve probably taken yourself out of the running for good,” Santana says, tossing her ponytail as she tilts up her chin. 

Quinn puts her finger on her chin, pretending to think. “Hmm, well, I was thinking more along the lines of prom queen, actually,” Quinn says, even though she doesn’t know who will win junior year if she ensures that Kurt does not get written in. If she can change that, surely she can make sure she herself wins instead. “It’s a long time between now and the end of junior year, Santana, much less the end of senior year.” 

“Sure, Q. Keep telling yourself that,” Santana says. “I’m sure your saggy mommy-tummy will look great in a prom dress.”

Quinn narrows her eyes. “Better than your breasts will,” she says too sweetly. “You might want to get those looked at.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with my breasts, unless you mean you being jealous of them,” Santana says. 

“But sometimes I can’t even tell they’re there, they’re so small,” Quinn says in the same tone of voice. She’s still not completely certain why Santana had a boob job after sophomore year in her dream, but she can’t help but think it probably means _Santana_ thinks they’re too small. “What’s your real problem, Santana?” 

“I just don’t understand you, Fabray,” Santana says. “You were at the top of your game, and you let _Finn Hudson_ knock you up. I thought you were smarter than that. You could’ve kept the secret up for another few months, even, but instead you quit the Cheerios and now you’re wearing a muumuu.”

“I control the narrative this way, Santana. I’m not wondering anymore if this is the day Rachel or Kurt or someone else feels spiteful. That’s exactly what I want.” Quinn shakes her head, smiling to herself. “The thing that you probably can’t understand is that I actually have things almost exactly how I want them, right now.” 

“But you’re pregnant and you’re off the Cheerios,” Santana says. “And you’re—you’re _fat_!”

Quinn rolls her eyes at the last sentence and steps closer to Santana, lowering her voice. “You and I both know there’s more to life, even at McKinley, than the Cheerios.” 

Santana snorts, tossing her ponytail again. “Not _much_ more.”

“It’s okay. I won’t let on to anyone,” Quinn says almost fondly, because she misses the Santana who walked off the Cheerios with her, junior year, and the Santana who stood up for her friends at various times. “Anything else?” 

“Nope. Just interested in seeing how this all plays out,” Santana says. 

“Me too,” Quinn says, even though she’s sure that they’re not discussing the same exact things, and she steps past Santana, continuing down the hallway.

 

The rest of the week brings a lot of staring and a few impertinent questions, all of which cause Quinn to raise one eyebrow as she stares down the questioner. As the weekend approaches, Quinn knows that they probably can’t put off indefinitely Ms. Hudson and Ms. Puckerman’s request for all of them to meet again, but she manages to convince everyone that after Sectionals and during the holiday break would make far more sense. 

When school starts the next week, Quinn remembers that it’s yearbook photo week, and she resolves to simply show up for the Cheerios photo without prior discussion. She was on the team during the football season, which is still why most of the school thinks that the cheerleading squad exists. The glee club photo is somewhat more problematic; Quinn remembers Rachel’s angling between commercial shoots to get Finn to be the only other one in the photo with her. The best way to combat that, Quinn realizes, is to get everyone on board for a group shot from the outset. 

Mr. Schuester announces that he has secured a spot in the yearbook for them, everyone starts to groan, and Quinn stands up, pivoting so she can look at Mr. Schuester as well as the remainder of the glee club. 

“Mr. Schuester is right. We should all be in the photograph,” Quinn says. “Even if the school copies are defaced, our own copies don’t have to be.” 

“That’s the team spirit I’m looking for, Quinn,” Mr. Schuester says, giving Quinn a weak smile, or maybe just a very weary one.

“Can I still draw the baby in on my copy?” Puck whispers loudly. 

“Not on mine,” Quinn says. 

“You can on mine,” Finn says. “That’d be cute.”

“So we’ll all do a group photo?” Quinn says. “Mercedes?” 

“I guess I’m in if the rest of you are,” Mercedes says. “Not like people don’t know we’re in the club.”

Quinn looks around at the rest of them, but everyone is either nodding or looks resigned, and Quinn sits back down, feeling like she’s accomplished something. By the end of the week, they’ve finished shooting the commercial, she’s been in the Cheerios yearbook photo, and all twelve of them have been in the yearbook photo for glee club. 

While she waits for Finn and Puck to pick her up on Saturday afternoon, Quinn goes over her list and her calendar. The next Saturday is Sectionals, and if Quinn doesn’t change anything, their setlist will be stolen and they’ll have to come up with a new one off the cuff. Quinn _thinks_ she’s given Mr. Schuester enough opportunities to avoid his being disqualified. What she has to decide is whether or not to change the setlist being stolen, and she can see pros and cons to both options. 

Since their weekend activity is driving to Dayton to do some holiday shopping, Quinn decides to bring it up on the drive, and she waits until they’re on the highway. 

“Boys? There’s something I have to decide whether or not to change, and I need your opinions.” 

“Do we have to break anyone else up?” Puck asks, and Quinn shakes her head.  
“Can we change it so I’m really, really smart at math?” Finn suggests. 

“Oh for heaven’s sake, you two,” Quinn says, shaking her head again. “No, but you could get Puck to help you with your math.” 

“What?” Puck says suspiciously. 

“Puck’s not good at math,” Finn says dismissively. “He’s good at being, like, hot.”

“Puck never goes to his math class, and yet he has, what? A B?” Quinn says, smiling to herself. “Puck would be _very_ good at math if he actually went to class.” 

Puck frowns. “Hey!”

Finn squints in Puck’s direction. “If you say so, Quinn. Hey, Puck? Help me with my math, okay?”

Puck frowns at Quinn and then looks at Finn and sighs. “Fine. I’ll help you with your math. What are we changing if it’s not people breaking up or math ability?” 

“Next week at Sectionals, we’re going to get there only to find out our setlist has been stolen and parcelled out to our competitors. We’re going to have to come up with a new setlist at the last minute, and I don’t know whether or not I should change that,” Quinn says. 

“What songs do we do instead?” Finn asks. 

“Rachel opened up with ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’, then we did ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ before reprising ‘Somebody to Love’,” Quinn says. “I can tell you those because Rachel will suggest that in any world, I expect, Finn came up with the second song, and I suggested the reprising.” 

“But the other teams got away with stealing our songs.” Puck keeps frowning. “I don’t know.” 

“We could find the other teams and punch them,” Finn suggests. 

“No punching!” Quinn insists. “We could stop our setlist from being stolen, and perform our intended songs. Or we can let it happen, because it did, I think, bring the club together.” 

“Can we visit the other teams next semester and leave itching powder in their rehearsal rooms?” Puck asks. “If we let them steal our songs? Finn, what’s another good one?” 

“Pee in their shoes.”

“Oh, yeah, we could even do that before they announce the results!” Puck says. “Maybe we should let it happen, even if that sucks for Mercedes.” 

Quinn nods, frowning a little. “I know. I thought about that. Finn? Should we let it happen in the name of glee club unity?” 

“Maybe we should secretly help Mercedes practice a replacement song,” Finn says. “In secret.”

“That is an excellent compromise,” Quinn says with a smile. “At least this time Mr. Schuester’ll be there.” 

 

By Thursday afternoon’s rehearsal, Quinn feels like things are going well. Mercedes has been practicing another song—‘Someday We’ll Be Together’—and it sounds fabulous, the mattresses got sent back, and Quinn, Finn, and Puck have a good plan in place for Saturday’s competition and how they’ll introduce the alternate set list to Mr. Schuester and the rest of the club. All of that runs through her mind as Mr. Schuester stands up in front of them, hands clasped with a distressed and disillusioned look on his face. There’s no reason that he should look like that, and Quinn frowns to herself as he starts to speak. 

“I have some bad news,” Mr. Schuester says. “I’m not going to be able to be your chaperone at Sectionals.” 

“Why not?” Quinn bursts out before she can stop herself. “No one’s broken any rules!” 

Mr. Schuester looks at her oddly before continuing. “I have some personal matters that I have to attend to. I can’t reschedule this. Believe me, I tried.”

Quinn settles better in her seat, crossing her arms. “Some things you _can’t_ change, I guess,” she mutters to herself. 

“So who is our chaperone?” Puck asks as he pats Quinn’s shoulder. 

“I’ve asked Ms. Pillsbury to step in for me,” Mr. Schuester says, taking a breath and making a somewhat pained face before continuing, “and Principal Figgins said he would also like to attend.”

“That did _not_ happen before,” Quinn hisses as everyone starts to talk. “Now we have to keep Figgins out of the way _and_ introduce a new set list!” 

“We can do it,” Puck says. “What was it we found out Figgins was scared of last year, Finn? Was it spiders or snakes?” 

“Snakes,” Finn says. 

“Awesome. We’ll tell Figgins we have a snake for a mascot, and he’s in our—what’s the room called again?” 

“Green room,” Quinn answers. 

“Yeah, in our green room, in a tank or whatever,” Puck agrees. “That’ll keep him out.” 

“Green snake in a green room,” Finn says. “So scary.”

Quinn laughs. “Don’t change too much, boys.”

For reasons Quinn can’t explain, the story about the snake works exactly as Puck thought, and it’s just the twelve of them and Ms. Pillsbury in the green room when they have to completely redo their set list. Their stories of Mercedes being afraid this would happen and Finn listening the radio the night before go perfectly, and Quinn suggests ‘Somebody to Love’ again. 

Their performance is just as good as Quinn remembers, and she thinks that Mercedes’s song went even better than Rachel’s did in her memories. When the results are announced, the New Directions are the winners, and Quinn turns to find Finn and Puck. Finn is giving Artie a high-five, so Quinn tucks her arm in Puck’s first. 

“Shall we get Finn and go celebrate?” 

Puck grins. “Yeah, definitely.” He steers them over to Finn, and Quinn puts her other arm through Finn’s. 

“Time to celebrate?” Quinn says. 

“Are we having the wine with the bubbles that go everywhere?” Finn asks. 

Quinn laughs. She still isn’t sure how much she’s managed to change, but it feels like a lot, standing on the stage with both of them. “We’ll take a five-year rain check on that.”

 

The second semester of Quinn’s sophomore year begins differently than she remembers—openly dating Puck _and_ Finn, Finn never having dated Rachel at all—and the same—Mr. Schuester announcing the theme of ‘Hello’ and Jesse St. James appearing. Just as Quinn had hoped would stay the same, Rachel and Jesse begin dating, and Quinn keeps her ears and eyes open, looking for any hint of troubles or successes. The other relationship that Quinn has a vested interest in is Mr. Schuester and Ms. Pillsbury’s, though she isn’t sure if they’re yet calling it a relationship. Mr. Schuester seems happier than she can remember him being up until her other senior year, though, and Ms. Pillsbury, while still appearing to suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder, also seems very happy. Quinn feels a little smug, even though she knows she had very little to do with it. 

When Mr. Schuester mentions Regionals, Quinn wonders if there’s any way to change the outcome. Vocal Adrenaline was the clear favorite in her memories, but Quinn didn’t see the performance, since she was at the hospital giving birth. Quinn also isn’t sure how much of their own performance suffered from what it always suffered from: last minute selection of songs and an overly strong focus on Rachel. Quinn remembers someone, probably Artie, mentioning that their performance had been uploaded to YouTube. She can’t reference it from before it happens, though, leaving her relying on her memory. 

Maybe it’s too big to change. 

Madonna week still happens, but instead of Kurt and Mercedes joining the Cheerios, Santana drags Rachel onto the Cheerios, which sends Quinn into fits of laughter. She can’t imagine how Rachel and Coach Sylvester interact with each other, given how in odd ways they’re very similar. She sits next to Brittany whenever she can that week and pumps Brittany for information about Cheerios practice and what Rachel’s doing, which is how she learns that Rachel has been effectively throwing tantrums in an attempt to get solos. By Wednesday of that week, Quinn suggests to Jesse that he might want to attend a Cheerios practice and help Rachel calm down, and she takes advantage of the quiet moment to study him appraisingly. 

“I think you really do like her,” Quinn says. “Don’t ruin something good for you that will last beyond high school. Even if you decide to go back to Vocal Adrenaline, tell Rachel first. Be honest with her, and don’t try to hurt her.” 

Jesse gives Quinn a very startled look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says unconvincingly. 

“I know a lot of things that I shouldn’t know. Why and how isn’t really important, but what is important is that you make Rachel happy, and Rachel makes you happy, and you should do your best to hang onto that,” Quinn says. 

“I got the impression you didn’t really care for Rachel, to be honest.” 

Quinn shrugs. “I don’t. I don’t want her involved with the people I care about, and I think she would happily take solos that should go to Mercedes if given even the smallest chance, but I also know that the most effective way to keep someone busy and away from the people I care about is for that person to be happy. You make her happy.” 

“Well.” Jesse stares at Quinn for so long that she starts to feel uncomfortable, which he doesn’t seem to notice. “You’re very honest. I appreciate that, and I’ll keep what you said in mind,” Jesse says. 

Quinn feels like more and more is changing while other things stay exactly the same. The songs they sing aren’t any different than before, though she suspects some motivations have changed. Kurt setting up Burt Hummel and Carole Hudson is no longer a surprise to Finn, and Quinn digs deep in her memories to try to remember what happened there. She gives Finn a warning about bonding too much with Burt, that he should try to do things with Burt that Kurt would also enjoy. 

She also tells Finn to invite Puck along to some of the things that Burt will suggest, and that it probably wouldn’t hurt for the two of them to make it clear that they’re not solely sharing Quinn, that they’re also involved. Maybe if Burt Hummel realizes he’s not choosing between his gay son and his straight almost-stepson, Kurt will feel less left out and it will put Finn in less of an awkward position. 

Because what Quinn remembers best from the early months of Burt dating Carole Hudson is that Finn was forced to adapt again and again, that he was the last to know but the first to be expected to smooth things over and know how to respond. She doesn’t know all the details and never did, but at least she has given him more warning than he had in the past. 

The other delightful thing about the winter months is getting to know Mercedes again. Before, Quinn had still been living with Puck, but now that she’s already at Mercedes’s house, the two of them are getting closer much faster. Mercedes talks about some of her hopes and aspirations, and Quinn confesses about wanting to go to Yale and how she’d like for Ms. Pillsbury to adopt the baby. 

They discuss glee club and solo distribution and ideas for other musicals that they could perform in the fall of their junior and senior years, and Quinn makes sure that Mercedes knows Quinn, at least, does not think the lead should by default go to Rachel. They discuss having auditions and having people who aren’t Mr. Schuester help make the decisions, even though Quinn knows that wasn’t enough by the time senior year came around. Maybe, Quinn thinks, if they’re all more forceful about auditions and equity, it’ll make a difference in how Artie and Ms. Pillsbury view things—and maybe it will change Coach Beiste’s entire outlook from the time she starts at McKinley. 

Quinn faces something of a dilemma as the time that she prepared the Glist approaches. She has quite the interesting reputation, dating two boys at once and pregnant as well, but she doesn’t feel nearly as alone as she did before, which means most of her motivation for making such a list is completely gone. Still, the list had resulted in some truly hilarious musical performances, and because of that, she still draws up the Glist and posts it, altering only a few things from her memory. 

The result is more or less what she wanted—some of the same performances, though Rachel has clearly learned, because her attempt at an epic video to ‘Run Joey Run’ doesn’t feature Finn or Puck alongside Jesse. Instead, the other two boys in the video are Artie and Mike, and it still makes Jesse somewhat upset, though clearly not to the same level, which is exactly what Quinn was hoping would happen. 

That weekend, she tells Finn and Puck about the version of the video she first saw, with the two of them having starring roles, and all of them laugh. Quinn wishes there were a way to tell them about how they looked and how it was all edited together, but instead she just describes it to them the best that she can. 

Mr. Schuester does figure out that it was Quinn who posted the Glist, just like he did before, but she uses the opportunity to hint at his relationship with Ms. Pillsbury, which seems to be going far more smoothly than in her memories. She needs that to be the case and needs that stability, and she wonders when exactly she, and possibly the boys, should approach Ms. Pillsbury and Mr. Schuester about the adoption. 

Quinn spends her Sunday afternoon post-studying time at the Lima Bean reviewing what she knows about adoptions and open adoptions, and she feels like all of them being able to see Beth periodically from near the beginning would be the best way to move forward, for them as well as for Beth and for Ms. Pillsbury and Mr. Schuester. She’s so engrossed in her research that it’s only at the last minute that she calls Puck almost frantically. 

“Don’t let your mom wash your hair!” 

“What?” Puck says. “She was going to the other night but it didn’t happen, and she brought it up just a few minutes ago. Why?” 

“She’ll find a mole or a freckle or something like that and insist that you go to the dermatologist and they’ll shave off your mohawk which just makes you act very very oddly for months,” Quinn says in a rush. “Put her off again. It’s nothing serious.” 

“Okay,” Puck says slowly. “I don’t want to shave my mohawk, so that’s probably a good idea. It’s kinda cool you remembered the timing, too.” 

“I don’t remember everything, but I remember what I can.” Quinn shakes her head. “You tried to date _Mercedes_ , Puck.” 

“I don’t think Mercedes would date me, even if I wanted to date her,” Puck says. “That was a weird world the angel showed you, Quinn.” 

Quinn laughs, because she’s thought that before, both about her memories and about her new memories and her new world. “I suppose so.” 

One thing that Quinn did not anticipate about her new world is how Finn and Puck think that her incessant need to pee is so funny. They insist that they don’t, but she can see their faces and occasionally catches them laughing as she hurries off to find the nearest bathroom, usually for the second time in an hour. If she weren’t the one running for the bathroom, she’d probably find it more amusing, too.

Kurt’s odd Mellencamp phase still happens, which shows Quinn that very little of what happened had very much at all to do with Finn, really, and everything to do with Kurt’s relationship with Burt Hummel—which, Quinn reflects, is not something she’s sure she could do anything about, even if she had the slightest hint of how to proceed with changing it. It’s clearly something between the two of them that plays out in various ways, and while it makes Quinn sad for both of them, though moreso for Kurt, she knows there’s nothing she as a pregnant sophomore in high school can say to Burt Hummel, and little she can say to Carole Hudson. 

The day that Kurt shows back up to school in what are normal clothes for him, Quinn goes to see Ms. Pillsbury at the end of lunch, knowing Ms. Pillsbury will write her an excuse for the following period. 

“Ms. Pillsbury? Do you have a moment?” 

“Oh, Quinn, of course. Come in. Sit down. How are you feeling?” Ms. Pillsbury asks. 

Quinn smiles and sits down carefully, knowing she’ll get larger but already feeling pretty big, and she puts her hand over where Beth is kicking. “I’m doing well. I have a couple of questions, though.” 

“Of course, of course.” Ms. Pillsbury sits down behind her desk, hands folded in front of her. “What exactly did you need?” 

“Do I have to list my pregnancy or anything about it on my college applications?” Quinn asks first, even though she knows the answer, because she wants to put Ms. Pillsbury at ease and in her element. 

“Oh, no, Quinn, of course not!” Ms. Pillsbury assures her. “That’s your private medical history, just like you wouldn’t have to list if you had strep throat every year.” Ms. Pillsbury makes a face at that and pumps some hand sanitizer out, seemingly without realizing it. 

Quinn nods. “And what do you know about open adoption?” 

“Open—oh, yes.” Ms. Pillsbury nods. “I think that’s a wonderful thing for you to look into, Quinn. Would you be wanting for you to have the sole contact, or the father as well?” 

“I couldn’t leave one of them out of her life,” Quinn says softly. “Do you think I can find her parents who would understand that?” 

“Well, I don’t know.” Ms. Pillsbury pauses. “I don’t think all potential adoptive parents would be okay with that, if I’m being completely honest, but I do think you could find someone or two someones.” 

Quinn nods again and is quiet, letting Ms. Pillsbury smile at her and study her, and Quinn takes a deep breath before looking up at Ms. Pillsbury. “Would _you_ understand that?” 

“They’ve both been very supportive in their way, haven’t they?” Ms. Pillsbury says. “I certainly understand why you’d want that, yes. Did you want me to help explain the situation to any potential adoptive parents?” 

“That would be helpful if it’s necessary, yes, but that wasn’t exactly what I meant,” Quinn says. “I meant—would you be okay with that, if you were to adopt her?” 

Ms. Pillsbury gasps loudly. “Quinn, I—are you— _me_?” 

“Yes. You’re kind,” Quinn says. “And yes, there’s a benefit to us, that you would be close. But I know you would never be cruel or conditional.” 

“Oh my goodness.” Ms. Pillsbury looks completely flummoxed. “Well. That’s a lot to take in, Quinn.” She straightens a stack of papers that doesn’t look at all like it needs straightening. “Can—can I give you an answer in a few weeks?” 

“Of course,” Quinn says, smiling again and carefully standing. “Thank you, Ms. Pillsbury.” 

“Thank you, Quinn,” Ms. Pillsbury says, but it sounds almost absent-minded, like her thoughts are far away. Quinn quietly leaves the office, pulling the door shut behind her. 

Quinn remembers Bryan Ryan’s appearance from her memories, but things start out a little differently, even from the beginning. When they all write down their dreams, Quinn puts down ‘Yale’, even though she knows she’ll achieve it. Puck starts to write something down, then looks at her and Finn and grins before scratching through it and muttering “we’ll get there sooner or later, so it’s not a _dream_.” Quinn doesn’t know what that means, but since everyone seems happy, she doesn’t inquire further. 

Later in the week, when Bryan Ryan has his change of heart, it sticks, and the only part Mr. Schuester mentions having in the community theatre production of _Les Miserables_ is a smaller role. Artie asks him why he didn’t go for a larger role, and Mr. Schuester says something about needing to split his time wisely because of some changes that might be coming up. Quinn smiles to herself and tries not to let on that she has any idea what he means, but she’s confident it means Ms. Pillsbury has spoken with him. 

Everyone nods and makes plans on how to congratulate Bryan Ryan, and when Beth kicks in the middle of rehearsal, Quinn automatically reaches to either side of her, picking up Finn’s hand in her left and Puck’s hand in her right, though some days they sit on the opposite sides, and she puts their hands on top of her belly. 

The thing she didn’t expect was that sometimes she has to remind herself that they aren’t truly both the father. They are in almost every way, and she can’t really discern a difference in the way they treat her or the way they talk about the baby. What she said to Ms. Pillsbury is the absolute truth—she couldn’t force one of them to walk away now and let the other continue, no matter which one it was. 

When Mr. Schuester announces Lady Gaga week, and the boys sans Kurt announce their intent to do Kiss instead, Quinn realizes that she needs to talk to Finn about moving in with the Hummels, preferably before Ms. Hudson springs it on him like a happy surprise. Quinn still doesn’t know the details entirely from her memories, but she knows that things went very poorly, and that both Kurt and Finn had agreed it was primarily Finn’s fault. 

Quinn also knows that she won’t have to worry about slipping up and calling the baby ‘Beth’ in front of Puck and Finn after this week, which is something of a relief. The more Beth moves and the closer they get to the birth, the more likely Quinn is call her by name. Quinn also needs to talk to Ms. Pillsbury again, but she decides to first have a talk with Finn after school on Monday, with Puck there as well, so she can warn him. A few texts later and the three of them are heading to Puck’s after school, since no one else will be there and Quinn can put her feet up and have a snack while they talk. 

“And water,” Puck insists, bringing her a large glass of ice water once they’ve all arrived and Quinn’s ensconced on the couch with her food. 

“Yes, fine, and water,” Quinn agrees. “Finn, I need to give you a warning of sorts about something.” 

“An angel warning or a regular warning?” Finn asks. 

“Angel warning. I don’t think it’s particularly your fault, but you were given the most blame,” Quinn says. 

“Not me?” Puck asks, sounding surprised. 

“You weren’t there,” Quinn says. “Finn was.” 

“What did I do? Or, _will_ I do, I guess?” Finn asks. 

“I honestly don’t know the complete details. I overheard Mercedes’s side of a phone conversation with Kurt about it, and I heard a few whispers at school, but nothing concrete,” Quinn says. “As far as I can remember, your mother is going to suddenly tell you that the two of you are selling your house and moving in with the Hummels—and you and Kurt are supposed to share a room.” 

Puck frowns. “That’s pretty uncool.”

“Oh man,” Finn says. “But I like my house!”

“Also, as far as I know, you were the only one who was surprised by the news just a few days before it was supposed to happen,” Quinn says. “Somewhat predictably and understandably, you lashed out, but when you finally did, Kurt was the nearest person.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what you said, but I know Burt Hummel kicked you out.” 

“Finn’s sixteen! He can’t live on the streets,” Puck says. “And he can’t share a room with Kurt, either. Kurt still sometimes looks at him like he’s plotting. Not as much, but I’ve seen it.” He looks at Quinn. “Yeah, I know you thought I didn’t.” 

“But I like having Kurt for a brother, right?” Finn asks, frowning. 

“Later on, yes, when everyone is informed at the same time, there’s a wedding, and everyone moves to a new house,” Quinn says. “And everyone has their own bedroom in the new house.” 

“So I should talk to Mom or Burt before it happens?” Finn says. “I could tell them I think it’s cool we’re all gonna be a family together, but that I need my space and stuff.”

“I think that’s probably best. It wasn’t fair of your mother and Burt to expect you to do the majority of adapting.” 

“If they’ve gotta move before you get a new house, tell them you’ll stay with me until then,” Puck suggests. 

Finn nods. “Okay. I don’t want to make Burt mad, and I don’t want Kurt to hate me or anything.”

“I think it’s pretty clear, having seen things twice now, Burt Hummel has his own issues,” Quinn says. “And now, can I convince the two of you to tell me what songs the boys will be performing this week?” 

Puck shakes his head. “Nope. I don’t think we can do that. Can we, Finn?” 

“No way,” Finn says. “That would be cheating.”

Quinn tries not to laugh, taking a long drink of water instead. “Not even for me?”

“Sorry,” Puck says, shaking his head again. 

“We still love you, though,” Finn says, grinning widely at Quinn. “And the baby.”

Quinn sighs as sadly as she can, but she lets it drop, content to wait until after the Lady Gaga performances and first Kiss performance. Mercedes does _not_ get a phone call from Kurt at any point, and after Finn talks to his mom, she apparently talks to Burt Hummel and they decide to put off moving into together until they find a house that’s new to everyone. Quinn has the sense that she may have just tampered with the timing of the wedding, but Kurt and Finn are certainly happier than they were, so she isn’t going to worry about that. 

Just as Quinn expects, the ‘Beth’ performance arrives, and she tries not to let on during or afterwards that she had known it was coming. After the rest of the club has left, the three of them are still in the room, Quinn slowly gathering her stuff. 

“We thought maybe, even if she is going to be adopted, they could still name her Beth,” Puck says. “You know we’d be really good dads, though.” 

“And you’d be a super good mom, too,” Finn adds. 

“I appreciate that, I do, and I know you would be,” Quinn says. “That’s not why I think adoption’s the best idea for all of us.”

 

“We’d take her to the park, and even let her make us do tea parties,” Puck says. 

“I would even wear a princess crown,” Finn says. “I promise.”

Quinn laughs, because she has no doubt that the two of them would wear crowns at tea parties. “I know you would. I know. But I don’t want what would happen to all of us, if we kept her. Too little money and too little sleep and too much stress, and it would be that much harder for all of us to leave this town.” Quinn shakes her head. “I’ll make sure the last time we all see her isn’t at the hospital. Okay?”

“Promise?” Puck asks. Quinn nods, and Puck nudges Finn. “I guess we could still do those tea parties?” Finn nods. Puck sighs but nods. “Okay. If you say it’s the best thing.” 

“It is. I know it doesn’t feel like there’s a best answer,” Quinn says. “But it will be.” 

“We believe you. I just wish it didn’t have to be like that,” Finn says. 

Quinn nods as they walk through the mostly empty hallways to the parking lot. “I know. But we’ll see her. Beth. We’ll see Beth.” 

“See?” Puck says triumphantly. “We did good.” 

“Yeah we did,” Finn says, fistbumping Puck. 

“Like I say,” Quinn says. “Don’t change too much, boys.” 

 

Once Beth’s name is finally re-established, Quinn feels like she’s perhaps left it too long to talk to Ms. Pillsbury again, and she goes to Ms. Pillsbury’s office instead of her first period class. 

“May I come in?” Quinn asks, knocking on the doorframe. 

“Quinn, of course,” Ms. Pillsbury says, straightening an already straight stack of papers, and Quinn’s sure she would smooth her skirt down if she hadn’t already been sitting behind her desk. “Sit down.” 

“Thanks,” Quinn says, carefully sitting in one of the chairs and perching on the edge. “I’ve still got several weeks, but I wanted to talk to you again about what I mentioned before.”

Ms. Pillsbury nods rapidly. “I’ve thought about it, Quinn, and I’ve discussed it with—well, I’ve discussed it.” She smiles almost nervously, and Quinn wonders if she really does think that Quinn doesn’t know who she means that she discussed it with. Quinn’s avoided trying to scrutinize Mr. Schuester too closely, at least for the time being. “I’m not immediately saying yes, Quinn, but I’m not saying no either.” 

Quinn nods. “If you did say yes, you’d be comfortable with an open adoption?” 

“Yes. We’d need to establish some guidelines either before she gets here or soon after, of course, about how often and where and what she’d eventually call you, and—” Ms. Pillsbury cuts herself off. “If, of course, I said yes.” 

“I think we’d be willing to talk about that,” Quinn says as she nods again. “I don’t want to put too much pressure on you, Ms. Pillsbury, but you’re not just my first choice. Right now, you’re my only choice.” 

Ms. Pillsbury smiles at that. “Well, Quinn, that’s very sweet of you. Don’t worry, I’m giving it very serious thought. I’ll have an answer for you for sure before she’s born, okay?” 

“Okay.” Quinn isn’t sure if Beth will still be born at the same time; technically she had been born nearly a month before her due date, but Quinn’s been careful to research the effect of diet and exercise on the strength of the amniotic sac and how it might contribute to early labor. Her goal is to make it through Regionals without giving birth on the day of the competition. “I’ll be thirty-six weeks two days before Regionals,” she offers. 

“Okay.” Ms. Pillsbury looks through her calendar and nods. “Two days before Regionals. That sounds like a good plan. Thank you, Quinn.” 

“Thank you, Ms. Pillsbury,” Quinn says, standing and leaving the office as soon as Ms. Pillsbury gives her a pass. She visits the bathroom before going on to class, thinking about how she’s attempting to change several important things, but very few other things seem impacted at all. Quinn doesn’t know what that means, unless it’s that the idea of time travel causing ripples, as if events are all in a pond, isn’t actually what happens. 

 

When Mr. Schuester announces the theme of funk once more, Quinn isn’t all that surprised, and she decides that one of the most delightful things she could do for herself is making sure Finn, Puck, and Mercedes still perform. The other thing she does is corner Jesse St. James, pointing her finger into his chest. 

“Hey! Hey!” Jesse says. “What did I do?” 

“Nothing, yet,” Quinn admits. “But I warned you before. If you want to go back to Vocal Adrenaline, talk to Rachel Berry first. Do not embarrass her. Do not _egg_ her. Explain to her that you want a national championship, but that next year, you’ll help coach her and her team to an appearance at Nationals. Got it?” 

Jesse never struck Quinn as particularly intelligent or as that obedient, either, but he nods immediately, and there’s a spark of something that could be understanding in his expression. “Don’t hurt Rachel. Don’t break up with her. Got it.” 

“Good,” Quinn says. “There will be consequences if you don’t listen. Like those Range Rovers that Vocal Adrenaline is so fond of?” 

“How—”

“Don’t worry about how I know things, Jesse. Just know that I do.” 

Jesse nods again and Quinn walks away, feeling accomplished. She texts Finn and Puck not to do anything, no matter what happens, without talking to her first. Even if Jesse or the whole of Vocal Adrenaline feels the need to do something similar to egging Rachel Berry, Quinn can make sure that Finn and Puck’s revenge is done in a way that does _not_ get them caught. 

Two days later, Rachel walks into school looking as if the message she’s trying to convey is that she will overcome any hardship, and Rachel knows Jesse must have told her that he was returning to Vocal Adrenaline. Mr. Schuester confirms the news during glee rehearsal, and Rachel stands up to assure everyone that her continued dating of Jesse will not impact her efforts on behalf of New Directions. Quinn nods along with everyone else, feeling pleased, and she feels even more pleased when everyone goes home that day without eggs or other pranks. 

Unfortunately, when they arrive at school the next morning, their rehearsal space has been egged, which makes no sense whatsoever to Quinn. The glee club isn’t even responsible for cleaning it up; all it does is make more work for the school’s janitorial staff. Puck and Finn immediately start whispering, and Quinn interrupts them. 

“No. You’ll wait until after Regionals, when they aren’t expecting it, and you’ll do something where there are no security cameras and a very low chance of being caught.” Finn and Puck nod almost meekly, and Quinn smiles. “Good. Don’t forget that!” 

Since Finn and Puck don’t have to be dragged into the principal’s office or find a way to pay to replace tires, the rest of their ‘funk’ time goes more smoothly, especially since Quinn avoids replicating her own performance from before. Quinn knows the likely outcome at Regionals, but she says nothing during their performance in front of Vocal Adrenaline, waiting to see what happens. 

Quinn doesn’t remember the meeting at Mr. Schuester’s apartment until the moment he invites all of them to it. When she arrives, Quinn looks around to see if there are any indications that he might be moving or that Ms. Pillsbury—and Beth—might be moving in with him. All the doors to all the rooms are closed, though, meaning all Quinn can see is the kitchen, living room, and bathroom, and she has no idea what the state of the bedrooms might be. By Thursday, she’ll know Ms. Pillsbury’s answer, though, and Quinn crosses her fingers briefly as she thinks about it, hoping for a yes. 

The glee club needs little prompting to get to the same point they were in the past, planning to do Journey songs, and Quinn doesn’t try to change anything except who is singing ‘Faithfully’. She makes the point that there are two strong female leads, between ‘Faithfully’ and the mash-up, and just as the male leads are being spread out, the female leads should be as well. The end result is Mercedes and Finn are singing ‘Faithfully’ and Rachel and Santana are sharing the lead on the mash-up, plus they’re splitting up ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ in the way that Quinn remembers. 

Quinn doesn’t really think it will affect the results of Regionals, but she knows something the rest of them do not—that even if they place last at Regionals, they will end up with a reprieve and a chance to continue the glee club. It’s possible that they could place second instead of third, too, and Quinn thinks about that as she gets ready for school on Thursday. She hasn’t yet told Finn and Puck that she’s getting an answer from Ms. Pillsbury that day; she’ll tell them after Regionals, one way or another. She doesn’t feel like she did before Regionals in her memories. She doesn’t feel as tired, and she doesn’t feel as crampy, and she whispers to Beth as she checks her hair in the mirror. 

“A few more weeks, Beth. You’re not ready yet.” 

Quinn goes to her first period class because she has a test, then goes to Ms. Pillsbury’s office. She sits down to wait for Ms. Pillsbury to return, and just after the bell rings, Quinn hears Ms. Pillsbury’s footsteps. She closes the door behind her and crosses behind her desk, smiling at Quinn, and before Ms. Pillsbury can speak, Quinn knows the answer. 

“Yes?” Quinn asks. 

Ms. Pillsbury nods, her smile getting bigger. “Yes. I’d like to talk to you and Finn and Noah next week after Regionals, but yes. The answer is yes.” 

Quinn stands up and moves towards the desk, holding out her hand. “ _Thank you_ ,” she says, feeling profoundly relieved. “We’ll come see you on Monday.” 

Ms. Pillsbury gingerly takes her hand, shaking it, and writes Quinn a pass for the remainder of the period. Quinn goes to the bathroom and cries a little, cries for how much better this will be than it was before, and then she washes her face and goes to third period. First, she has to get through Regionals without giving birth. 

Regionals _does_ happen without Quinn’s water breaking, and she doesn’t experience any cramping, much less contractions. The reconfigured distribution, or something else she’s changed, does result in their placing second, though Quinn can’t be sure exactly what it is, and she convinces Finn and Puck at least to celebrate, including going out to lunch the next day. 

“I have something to tell you,” Quinn says once they’re eating dessert. 

“Okay,” Finn says. 

“Ms. Pillsbury agreed to an open adoption.”

“Open for _all_ of us?” Puck asks. Quinn nods. 

“Wow,” Finn says softly. “So, we’ll still get to see Beth?”

“She wants to meet with us on Monday to figure out exactly how that’s going to work, but yes,” Quinn says, nodding again. “I want to get everything settled as fast as we can, now.” 

“Is she going to be born soon?” Puck asks.

“I… I don’t know,” Quinn admits. “I didn’t tell you because I was pretty sure I had changed it, and I had, but before, she was born yesterday.” 

“Oh man. That would be so crazy, if she had been born during Regionals!” Finn says. 

“My water broke right after we performed, and my mother showed up,” Quinn says, shaking her head. “Maybe she was still there, yesterday, but I didn’t look for her. And then Shelby adopted Beth. But now I don’t know how soon Beth will be born, so we should definitely talk to Ms. Pillsbury tomorrow.” 

“You think we should ask if Beth can just call us by our names?” Puck says. “‘Cause we’re not going to be raising her, but it’d be weird if she called us, you know. Mr. or Ms.” 

“Or ‘uncle’,” Finn says. “I don’t want to be her uncle. I’ll just be her Finn, if you think Ms. Pillsbury will say it’s okay.”

“I think that’s reasonable to ask her.” Quinn nods. “And we’ll want to make sure we see her often enough without it being confusing for any of us.” She pauses and suddenly smiles. “I mean, you two weren’t going to stop taking me out after she’s born, were you?” 

“Nope,” Puck says. “First stop, sushi.” 

“And the wine that bubbles,” Finn says. “I bet we could get somebody to buy us some if we said our girlfriend just had a baby.”

“What’s some other things you haven’t been able to do? Maybe horseback riding this summer,” Puck says. “We could all learn to scuba-dive.” 

“Dirt bikes or ninja fighting,” Finn suggests. “Boxing. Waterskiing.”

“I’m going to have a very busy summer,” Quinn says as she laughs. “Will either of you be horribly disappointed if I don’t dye my hair pink?” 

“Pink?” Puck says. “It’s not really your color.” 

“I like you blonde,” Finn says. 

“I think I’ll forego the Ryan Seacrest tattoo, too,” Quinn says somewhat wryly. “Since Beth _isn’t_ born yet, can we finish the evening with a movie instead of anything more strenuous?” 

“Maybe even two movies,” Puck says. “Or… what’s a good trilogy?” 

“ _Back to the Future_ ,” Finn says. 

“Yeah, _Back to the Future_ is good.” Puck stands up and pulls Quinn’s chair back. “Help her up.” 

“I’m not a complete invalid,” Quinn says, but she takes Finn’s offered hand and stands up awkwardly. “At least I know the two of you will never take a seat from a pregnant woman on a bus.” 

 

Their meeting with Ms. Pillsbury goes as well or better than Quinn expected, with all of them agreeing on a frequency of visits, what Beth will eventually call them, and to what extent Ms. Pillsbury will make photos and holidays accessible, especially when the three of them are done at McKinley. Ms. Pillsbury even agrees to let Puck tell Beth about Hanukkah and Passover, and Quinn carefully doesn’t ask if Mr. Schuester will be helping out. If he is, Quinn will be happy with that, but even if he won’t, Ms. Pillsbury will do a good job. 

Quinn finds herself going to her thirty-seven week appointment, and she makes her thirty-eight week appointment for the following Friday afternoon, after school. The entire week, Quinn doesn’t feel like she’s going to ever go into labor, and she feels the same way when she wakes up on Thursday at exactly thirty-eight weeks. She gets ready for school and nibbles at her breakfast on the way, sighing at how far the seatbelt has to stretch. 

She makes it through the first two periods of the day as if nothing is happening, and she stops in the bathroom between classes. The louder than usual splash doesn’t register with her at first, because she’s already sitting down, and then it hits her—her water still broke before contractions started. 

“Can someone hand me a pad?” Quinn calls before the bathroom can empty out. 

“Sure!” Tina’s voice answers, and Quinn can hear her unzipping her bag. “Wait,” Tina says as she walks towards Quinn’s stall. “Quinn? Are you _bleeding_? Should I call 911?” 

“No, no, I’m fine!” Quinn says quickly, reaching for the pad when Tina offers it under the door. “It’s just that my water broke.” 

“Oh, okay,” Tina says, then gasps. “Should I go get them? One of them?” 

Quinn finishes up in the bathroom and walks to the sinks. “Puck’s third period class is farther than Finn’s. Can you get him and tell him to meet us at the front of the school?” 

“Of course!” Tina runs out of the bathroom, and Quinn follows much more slowly, heading down the hall towards Finn’s classroom. The bell rings just before she reaches it, but the teacher doesn’t close the door, and Quinn stands in the doorway, trying to catch Finn’s eye. When Finn notices her, Quinn points at her stomach and then towards the front of the building. 

Finn eyes widen, and he immediately raises his hand. “Can I be excused to go help my girlfriend have a baby?”

The teacher doesn’t seem to know what to say to that, and Quinn gestures for Finn to come with her, which still doesn’t get the teacher to say anything. “Come on,” Quinn says. 

“Does Puck know? Do we need to get Ms. Pillsbury?” Finn asks, as soon as he’s out of the classroom. “Can you drive? Do I need to drive? Wait, do you need your bag or something?”

“I’ve been keeping it in the car,” Quinn says. “I think I can drive, because I haven’t had any contractions yet. My water broke, and Tina went to get Puck to meet us at the front of the school. And remember, Ms. Pillsbury said we should text her once I’m admitted.” 

“But you feel okay?”

“For the moment. I’m sure I won’t,” Quinn admits. She can hear Puck approaching before she can see him, sounding more like he’s running than walking fast, and when she and Finn round a corner, Puck comes around the opposite one. 

“She’s ready?” Puck says. “Do we need to get a wheelchair? Maybe we should carry her to the car.” 

Finn starts to scoop Quinn up into his arms, and Quinn sidesteps him as best she can. “No! You don’t need to carry me! I’m not even having contractions yet, Puck.” 

“Does that mean we need to rub those places we weren’t allowed to rub, once you’re at the hospital?” Puck asks. “Can you find that website again?” 

“We need to get you some basil,” Finn says. 

“I’m not in the mood for Italian,” Quinn says. “I don’t really want to eat at all.” 

“No, just the oil, so you can smell it or whatever,” Puck adds. “Are you driving yourself to the hospital? Because that’s pretty badass.” 

“Yes, I am,” Quinn says, smiling a little. “But no, we’re not going through any drive-throughs.” 

Once they arrive at the hospital and the hospital decides to admit Quinn, she texts Ms. Pillsbury and then walks around the labor and delivery area with Finn and Puck on either side of her. 

“Hey, you got halfway there without even feeling contractions,” Puck says. “That’s good, right?” 

“You’re the best at this, Quinn,” Finn says. 

“I think I’ll leave it off my résumé, though,” Quinn says. They make two or three circuits of the floor before Quinn first feels a contraction, and stops in place, hanging off both of them. “Oh shit, I forgot how horrible this is.”

“Do you want to go back to the room?” Puck asks. “We can get you back to the room!” 

“I’ll rub your feet when we get there, too. I’ll press all the points,” Finn says. 

“Shh!” Quinn says, closing her eyes until the contraction ends. “Okay. Room, slowly,” she agrees. The three of them walk slowly—Quinn shuffles, if she’s being honest—back to her room, where she sits on the bed, one foot in each of their laps. Between contractions, Quinn texts Mercedes, and as they get closer together, Quinn gets a text back from Mercedes, that she’s in the waiting area with Ms. Pillsbury. 

Eventually, the nurse tells Quinn what she already knew, that it’s time to push, and the room gets crowded and busy as the nurses set up for the birth. Quinn looks at Finn and Puck and points to either side of her head. 

“You don’t have to watch from down there.”

Finn looks relieved. “Okay. Cool.”

“Yeah?” Puck steps backward slowly. “You won’t get mad if we stay up here and hold your hands and push your hair from your forehead and stuff?” 

Quinn shakes her head. “I think we’ll all be happier that way.” 

“Okay. Yeah.” Puck nods. “Good.” 

Pushing is just as strenuous as Quinn remembers, and she falls back against the bed when Beth is out, crying a little and bigger than she was before, thanks to her extra two weeks. “Hi,” Quinn says in Beth’s direction as the nurse wraps her up. 

“She’s so tiny!” Puck says. “Look!” 

“I think she looks really big to just’ve come out of another person,” Finn says. “She’s so cute!”

“She’s probably average for a newborn,” Quinn says as the nurse hands Beth to her. “Oh. Hi again,” Quinn says quietly. “Do you recognize our voices?” 

“We could sing for her if she doesn’t,” Puck says, touching her cheek softly. “She looks like she knows us. Hi, Beth.” 

“Hey there, Beth,” Finn says. He strokes the wisp of blonde hair on Beth’s head. 

The three of them sit there, watching Beth and occasionally whispering to her, for enough time that Quinn isn’t sure how much time has passed. Puck sighs a little. “Are we sure?” he whispers. 

“I know,” Quinn says equally softly. “But I think we are.” 

“We could keep her a little bit longer,” Finn says. 

“Ms. Pillsbury won’t come in until we’re ready. And she and Beth won’t go until we’re ready. Remember?” Quinn says, shifting Beth slightly in her arms. 

“I think I really love her already,” Finn says quietly, tracing his fingertip over Beth’s tiny, curled-up fingers. 

“Yeah.” Puck looks up and then back at Beth. “I love everyone in this room except for that nurse who’s still in the corner.” 

Quinn stifles a laugh. “He’s probably not offended by that. I think he’s the baby nurse.” 

“You think we could make him leave?” Finn asks. “She’s still _ours_ , right? We’re allowed to be here without, like, adult supervision. We made her!”

“I think he’s just monitoring her, but I don’t know,” Quinn admits. “But yeah. We’ll keep her for a little while longer, just us.” She kisses Finn’s cheek and then Puck’s. “She’ll always be a little bit ours.” 

“I hope she’s tall,” Finn says. 

“She’d better be able to sing,” Puck says. “You think she’ll play, like, basketball or something?” 

“Maybe she’s a runner,” Quinn says. “We can tell Ms. Pillsbury it’d be better if she’s not a Cheerio.” 

“Maybe she’ll be good at stuff we’re not even good at, like drawing or swimming or something like that,” Finn says. 

“Underwater drawing,” Puck says. 

“You two,” Quinn says. “Beth, listen to them, but don’t always take them seriously.” 

 

 

Just as she remembers, Quinn doesn’t check the online system for Yale after ensuring that every part of her application, including her teacher recommendations, is submitted. She waits for the envelope to come in the mail, and she does not wave it excitedly at her mother. While Mercedes’s mother and father will be excited for her, this is something she wants to do alone. 

She sits in her bedroom and holds the envelope in her hand. Quinn knows what the paper will say—with the exception of her address, everything about the envelope is the same as she remembers. She opens the envelope slowly and reads it with a smile before slipping into the frame she already bought for herself. A quick hammering of a nail and the letter is hanging on the wall, and Quinn plans to leave it there. There’s no need to take it with her to Yale itself, and Mercedes’s family has generously already said she can consider their house her home at least through her undergraduate degree, and that they can all discuss it if and when she goes to graduate school. 

Quinn stares at the letter for at least half an hour, and she considers looking over the list that she made during her sophomore year. It’s not the moment she left yet, though. As time has passed and as she’s seen more things deviate and more things stay the same despite her interventions—Santana’s halting coming-out process has been nearly identical to what Quinn remembers—Quinn still isn’t sure what she experienced. A dream, a vision, some kind of time travel, none of it completely explains it or fits perfectly. Whatever it is or was, she’ll wait for the exact same time and place. 

Two months later, New Directions wins Regionals for the second year in a row. Their set list is not what Quinn remembers, thanks in large part to the complete absence of one song being dedicated to Rachel Berry having a solo. There’s no wedding to attend afterwards, either, but Quinn still waits to be the last to leave, watching everyone drive away from McKinley before she even climbs in her car. 

Within ten or fifteen minutes, she sees enough online to know everyone is in completely different places, alone or with one other person, and none of New Directions is anywhere near a courthouse. Rachel’s Facebook status is appropriately dramatic, about how underappreciated she is, and that she’ll be spending the rest of the day at her house preparing for her NYADA audition. Finn hasn’t posted anything since they won over an hour ago, but Puck’s tweets mention ‘F’, so clearly they are nowhere near a courthouse. 

Quinn smiles to herself and turns her phone on silent, placing it face-down on the seat beside her, and drives to the Lima Bean. A corner table hides her from most of the coffee shop, including Kurt and his boyfriend, and she puts in earbuds before pulling out a fresh sheet of paper and the list she scribbled down as she had started her second try at sophomore year.

She rolls her eyes a little at her sophomore year self. In the overall scheme of things, the idea that Finn would choose football over the glee club for at most a few days? Should never have been the first thing on her list. Her concern about being slushied looks even more laughable in retrospect. Out of everything that sophomore-her had remembered and had wanted to change, she had still written down a slushie as if it were of grave importance. In the end, even before the slushie hit her, she’d changed her mind about altering that moment, anyway, and Quinn shakes her head a little as she moves down the list. 

Coach Sylvester hadn’t figured out Quinn was pregnant on her own, and Quinn isn’t sure how she changed that. Maybe by telling Finn everything, early on, she had changed enough to make sure that Coach didn’t find out. 

The next line on her list makes her laugh, covering her mouth quickly so no one else in the Lima Bean will stare. ‘Puck and Finn fight.’ That had been inevitable, given that she had been unable to change her pregnancy and the fact of who Beth’s father is. Of course Puck and Finn were going to fight. The thing that Quinn had changed was the nature of the fight, when it happened and how it happened and how long they spent not talking and glaring at each other. 

Of course, they had spent a considerable amount of time ‘not talking’, even after they were no longer fighting, but that only makes Quinn laugh again. What she had changed had been more than worth any chance of changing other things, she knows, because Finn and Puck never spent months without talking. Both of them were happier almost immediately, and definitely happier throughout their entire sophomore years. 

Even though Quinn hadn’t written it explicitly on her list, she stops to think about the underlying goal: making sure that Rachel and Finn never dated. Not briefly in sophomore year, not for half a year or so in junior year, and not all during their senior year. There had still been plenty of drama within the glee club, of course, but none of it had revolved around Finn and Rachel as a couple. Rachel had, once she started dating Jesse, never shown more than friendly interest in Finn. Quinn has been completely successful in that goal. 

No one in the glee club has gotten engaged either. 

Of course, that’s only true because Rachel had returned from their winter holidays with a wedding ring on her finger and the news that she and Jesse had eloped, getting married on New Year’s Eve. There must, Quinn thinks uncharitably, be something about Rachel Berry that destines her to be a seventeen year old bride. After living through two and a half years twice, though, Quinn is far more tactful than she had been the first time. Instead of saying anything, Quinn and Mercedes had organized Rachel’s belated bridal shower. 

Quinn continues scanning down her list. She never dated Sam Evans, and Sam and Mercedes started dating before the end of the first semester of junior year. Quinn had enough knowledge ahead of time that she was able to organize the glee club families to make sure Sam’s family didn’t have to move into a motel or leave the state, and the end result is that Mercedes and Sam are _still_ dating. If Quinn stays at the Lima Bean long enough, she’ll probably see them after the movie they were going to go to when they left McKinley’s parking lot. 

Quinn takes most of the credit, even if it’s just with herself, Puck, and Finn, for the fact that Kurt never transferred schools. As far as Quinn has been able to tell, he never even met Blaine beyond competing against him, the same as they all did. Instead of threatening Kurt throughout the fall of their junior year, Karofsky spent the same time period trying to woo Kurt. 

Quinn quickly reads down her list. She didn’t drink at the party the glee club had in February of junior year, but it hadn’t been at Rachel’s house. Instead, it had been at Kurt and Finn’s, and they had all learned that Burt was surprisingly sound sleeper. Still, Quinn had stayed sober, enjoying watching her friends. 

Because Finn and Rachel had never dated, there had been no disastrous on-stage kiss at Nationals their junior year, and while they had not won Nationals, they had made the top ten, which had been a huge moment of affirmation for Quinn. 

The rest of the list is largely inapplicable, and Quinn takes a drink of her coffee before thinking about the most important people to her, then and now: Finn, Puck, and Beth. 

After Beth’s birth, they had immediately begun the agreed upon schedule of visits, keeping them short because of her age, and Ms. Pillsbury had sent them photos even between visits. As Ms. Pillsbury and Mr. Schuester had begun to get even closer, it had been Quinn, Finn, and Puck that Ms. Pillsbury talked to, asking if they were okay with Mr. Schuester being, in effect, Beth’s father. The three of them had carefully not revealed that they had hoped for that outcome. 

Beth’s first word had been ‘Mama’, but her second, third, and fifth words had been ‘Finn’, ‘Fuck’, and ‘Quinn,’ with ‘Fish!’ taking its place at number four. Even at almost two, ‘Puck’ still comes out with a slight ‘f’ sound to it at times. Quinn knows that having Ms. Pillsbury adopt Beth was absolutely a better outcome than having her with Shelby, and the three of them all have a bond with Beth that she couldn’t have even imagined, before. 

The three of them aren’t _the three of them_ anymore, though Quinn isn’t entirely sure Finn and Puck went completely back to being best friends and only best friends. The summer after sophomore year had been just as fun as Quinn had hoped, the three of them going almost everywhere together, unless Quinn was with Mercedes, and they’d continued their physical relationship as it had been, cuddling and hugging and kissing and making out. 

Over the course of the fall semester of junior year, as Quinn focused on her grades and preparing for the SAT for the second time, the three of them had spent less and less time together, and around the time of Thanksgiving, Quinn had realized that she’d been with the two of them for well over a year. Yes, she’d been pregnant a good part of that time, and no, she wasn’t the type to do something sexual all the time, but the fact that they were still just making out was, Quinn had decided, telling. After another week of thinking and observing herself, Quinn had come to a conclusion: while she loved Finn and Puck dearly, she wasn’t _in_ love with either of them. It had taken all three of them a few more weeks to come to an equilibrium without the romantic relationship, but as Quinn crumples her list, she knows that she has three best friends: Mercedes, Finn, and Puck. 

Quinn knows she’ll be at Yale and in New England on her own, without any of the three of them. Mercedes is still weighing her options for the fall, since she has the desire to go to LA and try to make it, as well as a few college acceptances, acceptances no doubt helped by Mercedes’s starring roles in two different musicals in high school— _Anything Goes_ their junior year, and _West Side Story_ their senior year. Finn and Puck are heading to Columbus, to OSU, though Quinn isn’t entirely sure what they’re planning to major in. Sometimes she suspects they never quite gave up on the idea of being spies. 

Quinn doesn’t know why she was chosen to go back in time, and she doesn’t know if she made the changes that God or the angels or whatever chose her would have made. She knows that when she looks around at herself and her friends and the rest of the glee club, everyone seems happier. She knows that Beth is in a much better home, and they have a much better relationship with her. She knows that she avoided pink hair, and she made sure that Puck and Finn stayed far closer with little gap in that closeness. 

Quinn doesn’t know if she made the right decisions, but she wouldn’t alter any of them. She, and all of the people she cares about, are too happy with the way things are now.


End file.
